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Hamster Book Club Halloween Special - White Darkness by David A. McIntee (featuring James Lark & Michael Mills) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:03
  Silvery moonlight illuminated the dusty floor of a small
• 0:07
  village cemetery, bestowing upon it an appearance very similar to
• 0:12
  that of lunar soil itself. The cemetery was merely a
• 0:16
  collection of crudely fashioned Wooden Crosses or scratchily
• 0:21
  carved stones, all of which sprouted from the lifeless Stony
• 0:26
  ground. At tired angles.
• 0:29
  The moonlight cast a sharply contrasting light, which made
• 0:33
  the shadows deeper and more clean edged than they might
• 0:36
  otherwise have been. As everywhere else on the
• 0:40
  island, a constant sound of drumming pervaded the warm night
• 0:44
  air. Gradually one particular piece
• 0:47
  of rhythm grew bolder, insinuating its way through the
• 0:50
  surrounding vegetation with liquid ease and sending small
• 0:54
  lizards scampering off the stones into their hollowed
• 0:57
  lairs. Jarring yet peculiarly
• 1:01
  persuasive rhythm, it was accompanied by the appearance of
• 1:04
  a double row of eerie lights which soon resolved themselves
• 1:08
  into flombo torches. The torches were carried by
• 1:11
  perhaps a dozen shabbily dressed men and women in the midst of a
• 1:15
  larger group, some of whom carried the drums with which
• 1:18
  they beat the cadence which drove the walkers on in
• 1:21
  irregular spasmodic movements. In the centre of the group four
• 1:26
  men carried a coffin on which was mounted A battered top hat
• 1:30
  with feathers sprouting jauntily from a band around it.
• 1:35
  In a matter of minutes they came to the stone posts and wooden
• 1:38
  arch which marked the gateway to the cemetery.
• 1:41
  Just before those bearing the coffin and torches arrived,
• 1:44
  several of the others rushed forward, chanting and scattering
• 1:48
  cornmeal and droplets of rum in a cruciform pattern across the
• 1:51
  gateway. This done, they formed up again
• 1:55
  and entered the cemetery, followed by the rest of the
• 1:58
  group. Those bearing the torches thrust
• 2:01
  them into the ground, then formed a wide circle, while the
• 2:05
  four pallbearers put down the coffin and joined the circle
• 2:08
  along with most of the others. The drummers moved to one side
• 2:12
  and beat the drums even more insistently, while the drums
• 2:16
  rattled out on a surprisingly shrill note, quite unlike most
• 2:20
  of the background drumming. The members of the group began
• 2:23
  to dance in a strange, spasmodic manner which made them seem like
• 2:27
  puppets under the control of a master other than themselves.
• 2:31
  In mere moments, several were thrusting hands into the torches
• 2:35
  without giving any indication of feeling pain.
• 2:39
  Their skin also remained unblemished.
• 2:42
  Meanwhile, 2 robed priestesses had appeared and taken the arms
• 2:47
  of a youth of no more than 14, accompanying them willingly.
• 2:51
  He lay down on the somewhat darker earth of the newest grave
• 2:54
  in the cemetery, the dancers now calming slightly, though still
• 3:00
  in the grip of some internal rhythm.
• 3:02
  One man, slightly older than the rest, stepped towards the coffin
• 3:06
  and knocked three times, then stepped back.
• 3:10
  Instantly, the coffin lid soundlessly whipped open and a
• 3:14
  figure leapt out to dance to its own discordant rhythm.
• 3:18
  A good 6 feet tall, he was solidly muscled.
• 3:21
  When he smiled at the congregation, it was the sort of
• 3:24
  smile usually associated with the bloodiest of carnivores.
• 3:29
  The grin widened on seeing the youth, at which point the figure
• 3:32
  reached back into the coffin and drew forth a machete and a
• 3:36
  calabash, which was then sliced in half and scooped out.
• 3:40
  Half of it was placed above the youth's navel while the others
• 3:43
  all danced round him before stopping.
• 3:45
  As the tall figure approached, a chicken in one hand, the machete
• 3:50
  in the other, the dancers slowed until they were swaying on the
• 3:54
  spot while the tall figure drew back the chicken's head and slit
• 3:58
  its throat, allowing the blood to flow into the hollowed out
• 4:01
  calabash. He then lifted the calabash and
• 4:04
  offered it to each of the most frenzied of those present.
• 4:08
  Each of them sipped A prescribed amount.
• 4:11
  Next the senior of the two priestesses, in advancement not
• 4:16
  age, left the cemetery, and the others formed an aisle along
• 4:19
  which the youth who had stood followed her.
• 4:23
  When they had gone, the tall figure spun delightedly over to
• 4:26
  the coffin, followed by those who had sipped the blood.
• 4:30
  Inside the coffin were many long, sinuous forms which could
• 4:35
  have been taken for snakes. In the shifting torch light, the
• 4:39
  tall figure drew out one for each man and handed them over.
• 4:43
  The objects were about four feet long and dry to the touch, while
• 4:47
  at the same time feeling oddly rubbery.
• 4:51
  Each of the men thus equipped then ran off, scattering into
• 4:55
  the countryside, heading for all the nearby roads, while everyone
• 4:59
  else set off for their homes. In a few minutes, only the tall
• 5:04
  figure was left, emitting a low, knowing laugh.
• 5:09
  Still grinning, he turned from the gateway and walked off into
• 5:13
  the deepest of the surrounding shadows, to be swallowed up as
• 5:17
  completely as if he had sunk into a pool of ink.
• 5:25
  Welcome to Hamster Book Club, a special edition this time to
• 5:31
  mark the beginning of All Hallow, Tide, the Eve of All
• 5:35
  Saints, or, if you're so inclined, Halloween.
• 5:38
  And with me to indulge in some literary Spooks are two people
• 5:41
  highly qualified to comment on Nocturnal Thrills.
• 5:44
  Michael Mills, Trick or Treat? I, I think I'm the treat side of
• 5:51
  this, this duo that you're about to introduce.
• 5:53
  I think we all know that. OK, well so your treat is that
• 5:57
  you get to hear one of the comments I sent in for the
• 6:00
  Arsene department strictly that Fraser Gregory in his wisdom
• 6:04
  decided not to use. So what did I say about the
• 6:08
  smugglers? I wrote read the synopsis of the
• 6:11
  smugglers and it looks like it would be a smashing slice of tea
• 6:14
  time daring do. So why is this another one I
• 6:16
  can't remember a thing about? Could it be the missing visuals?
• 6:21
  Or is it just 1/2 hearted effort from a team not interested in
• 6:23
  historicals? It is vital that we work
• 6:26
  together to recover these missing episodes so we can
• 6:29
  settle it one way or the other. And also because shirtless Ben.
• 6:34
  Do you notice as well the comments that he excluded were
• 6:38
  the ones where you disagreed with him?
• 6:40
  He. Did not agree.
• 6:42
  To. See what happened here?
• 6:43
  Joe Ford Trick or treat? Oh trick please.
• 6:47
  Well, well, the trick is you think I'm here to discuss the
• 6:50
  book. I'm actually just here to read
• 6:52
  out the comments that I sent to the cum hamster for the arse and
• 6:57
  Hartnall, which Fraser Gregory in his wisdom decided not to
• 7:00
  read out. Let's see what I said about the
• 7:01
  war machines. I wrote.
• 7:03
  The War Machines has pace and is lovely to look at.
• 7:06
  Thanks to Michael Ferguson who demonstrates an instant flair
• 7:10
  for this new trendy take on Doctor Who.
• 7:12
  But Bowie comparison incoming. It's a bit like listening to
• 7:17
  Let's Dance after Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.
• 7:21
  Superficially fun, but lacks the richness and depth that we're
• 7:25
  used to. Oh, I can see why you've gone to
• 7:29
  the efforts to somehow crowbar those comments into They were
• 7:32
  pretty delicious, actually. Well, anyone looking for more
• 7:36
  insightful comments can check check me out on Blue Sky as as
• 7:39
  Fraser apparently didn't. Anyway, look, we're not here in
• 7:44
  Let's Dance territory this evening.
• 7:46
  No, we're dipping into the New Adventures.
• 7:50
  Notoriously uncompromising, aggressive, noisy, violent,
• 7:54
  divisive, offensive or just badly written, though with some
• 7:58
  unexpected gems and plenty of hints at the vibrant years that
• 8:03
  were ahead. That's right, the Virgin New
• 8:05
  Adventures are basically Tin Machine in this analogy.
• 8:11
  But before we discover whether today's subject is offensive and
• 8:14
  badly written or an unexpected gem, shall we find out what it
• 8:17
  is? Michael, I'm going to ask you to
• 8:20
  introduce today's topic of conversation.
• 8:24
  We are doing the Virgin New Adventure from 1993, White
• 8:31
  Darkness by David A McKinsey, the first book from someone who
• 8:36
  would go on to be a very familiar name in Doctor Who
• 8:39
  literature. Absolutely, Joe.
• 8:42
  Why are we talking about white darkness?
• 8:45
  Well, because it's got some zombies in it.
• 8:47
  Well, I mean, maybe once it's got zombies in it.
• 8:51
  Because ostensibly it's a Horror Story, I think, although I'm not
• 8:56
  really sure what genre is trying to touch on from 1 scene to the
• 9:00
  next. I have a theory that we're doing
• 9:02
  it because it's the only Doctor Who book with people made out of
• 9:05
  plasticine. Just like morph on the front
• 9:07
  cover. I mean, have you seen that
• 9:09
  artwork? Well, I suggest you look at the
• 9:13
  body proportions of Sophie Aldridge on that cover.
• 9:16
  Yeah. And then check out First
• 9:18
  Frontier by David A McKinsey, Right.
• 9:21
  Why does she look like a child on the front cover of this book?
• 9:25
  And voluptuous woman in First Frontier?
• 9:29
  It's very strange. The most horrific thing on that
• 9:31
  cover is Sylvester Mccoy's face. If you zoom in there, we have a
• 9:37
  veritable scream mask. And you know, you can't see this
• 9:42
  listeners, but there is a zombie on the cover.
• 9:45
  It's. Hard to tell which it is though,
• 9:47
  isn't it? They do look quite similar, yes.
• 9:50
  The only person who really gets away on that cover is Benny, and
• 9:54
  that's because at this stage we didn't know what Benny was meant
• 9:57
  to look like. I mean, she still looks a bit
• 9:59
  like Morpho, doesn't she? Let's be honest.
• 10:02
  I think it's the wrong facial expression.
• 10:04
  I think that's what's that's the problem with Benny.
• 10:06
  There's, there's, there is a for those of you who don't have
• 10:08
  access to the Internet to look this up, there is a zombie
• 10:12
  lurching towards our regulars who are otherwise just looking
• 10:15
  at the sea. But Benny's got an expression on
• 10:17
  her face of oh fucking hell. Like it's not, It's not a game.
• 10:23
  Zombies a game on. Top of all the historical
• 10:26
  intrigue. Intrigue, you say?
• 10:30
  OK. I am curious as to when each of
• 10:34
  you came to this book. Have you just read it now for
• 10:36
  this podcast or have you read it before?
• 10:39
  First time, first time. For me, it was one of those kind
• 10:42
  of, I think semi forgotten new adventures.
• 10:46
  It's one of those ones you go like, oh, you know, white
• 10:48
  darkness toy soldiers, you know, those sort of ones.
• 10:52
  That's the the covers don't jump out.
• 10:55
  They don't get spoken about huge amount.
• 10:57
  I think it was the only thing I really knew about it was that it
• 11:00
  was David A Mckinsey's first one.
• 11:02
  But but no, I was. I was fresh to it.
• 11:05
  Joe. I first finished this book about
• 11:09
  21 1/2 minutes ago, so it's my first time as well.
• 11:13
  Oh, it's your first time. Yeah, so fresh actually start
• 11:17
  that. That's the question about. 2
• 11:20
  about two months ago might be a slight clearer as to how I found
• 11:24
  this novel. Well, before we go into that,
• 11:27
  and I'm sure you've got plenty to say on the subject, shall we,
• 11:31
  shall we do a little bit of a precis on what what it actually
• 11:34
  it is about? Because you mentioned Joe, it it
• 11:38
  perhaps defying categorisation genre wise.
• 11:42
  Michael mentioned historical intrigue.
• 11:46
  Maybe we can have a little bit of a just a an overview of of
• 11:49
  what white darkness is actually tackling.
• 11:51
  I feel that Michael should take the reins on this one.
• 11:54
  He mentioned historical intrigue.
• 11:57
  Yeah, sure, I'll have a stab. So the 7th Doctor, Ace and Benny
• 12:04
  lands on Haiti, Haiti. Haiti in Haiti in 1915 amid.
• 12:12
  There are lots of names in this book which we are going to
• 12:14
  mispronounce if you are French or Haitian.
• 12:18
  Sorry, there's one name we're not going to pronounce at all,
• 12:22
  all right? They land on Haiti in 1915
• 12:27
  amidst this is so this is all this bit is all historical fact.
• 12:30
  It's much political turmoil. It's a country that's had a
• 12:34
  very, unfortunately very troubled history right up to the
• 12:37
  present day. This period they've gone through
• 12:39
  a succession of presidents, overthrown in various ways
• 12:43
  through various coups, leading right up to this point where we
• 12:48
  find it's sort of reaching its culmination.
• 12:51
  At the same time, there's intrigue afoot with Germans
• 12:56
  infiltrating the islands, possibly to exploit the
• 13:00
  political turmoil that we mentioned, but also amongst the
• 13:05
  voodoo Vudhan practitioners of the islands, Perhaps something
• 13:10
  quite less earthly is being awoken.
• 13:15
  Gosh, doesn't that sound interesting?
• 13:18
  I think there's a lot, there's a lot going on in this book.
• 13:21
  I should say I I first came across it a few years ago,
• 13:24
  working my way through the New Adventures and the the
• 13:29
  historical setting in particular.
• 13:30
  The the fact that it's taken such a precise moment in history
• 13:36
  and an important moment in history was a thing that
• 13:39
  immediately appealed to me reading the New Adventures in
• 13:42
  order, having gone from one dull futuristic dystopia to another.
• 13:50
  This comes after well, you've got Transit, which whatever we
• 13:55
  think of transit is not an easy read.
• 13:56
  Then you've got the highest science, which is a more
• 13:59
  enjoyable read than transit, arguably, but it's.
• 14:01
  Not an easy read now though. No, it's not.
• 14:03
  And it's and it's again, it's in this very kind of of it's Time
• 14:07
  Steam, slightly steampunky dystopia.
• 14:11
  Then you've got The Pit, one of the worst books ever written.
• 14:14
  Deceit, which is Peter Darwin? It's on par, James.
• 14:19
  It's on par all right with the pier and.
• 14:22
  You've got loose for Rising, which I think Joe likes more
• 14:24
  than I do. I just, I think it starts well
• 14:26
  and and it and it fails to deliver.
• 14:28
  And again, it's another boring future.
• 14:30
  And these futures of which are separated by centuries,
• 14:34
  theoretically all are all the same and they're all depressing.
• 14:38
  And so to actually arrive in 1915 and not just not, I mean,
• 14:46
  with 1915, it's, it's probably an, an area of history with
• 14:51
  which most people are fairly unfamiliar because in this
• 14:53
  country, all we do from 1914 to 1918 is the First World War and
• 14:58
  significant other things were going on around the world.
• 15:02
  The, the, the US invasion of Haiti is something we ought to
• 15:06
  be aware of because it had, you know, mammoth repercussions in
• 15:09
  in the decades that followed. And obviously we've got the kind
• 15:14
  of crossover with the First World War.
• 15:15
  So it's a very kind of rich area of history.
• 15:17
  And straight away, to my mind that set it apart from
• 15:20
  everything surrounding it. Are you suggesting then that you
• 15:25
  have to read these books in succession to find this book a
• 15:28
  gem? I'm certainly suggesting that it
• 15:33
  helps. OK.
• 15:36
  And because this was in my top 10, wasn't it?
• 15:39
  It was, yes. I'm looking forward to getting
• 15:42
  into that. Yeah, well, it's, it's a
• 15:45
  position I'm willing to defend partly on the basis that any top
• 15:49
  10 is subject to change on a, you know, hourly basis.
• 15:54
  But, but I think context is important, particularly at this
• 15:57
  point, this point in the new adventures where they are so
• 15:59
  uneven and there's so much dross really.
• 16:03
  And let's be honest, it's it's it's not a period of Doctor Who
• 16:07
  fiction that has aged particularly well.
• 16:10
  And so for all of its manifest flaws, I think this is a book
• 16:15
  that's got a lot that's interesting and rich about it.
• 16:19
  I, I'm coming at this from the other angle, as you know, but my
• 16:25
  problem is I read this, you know, I'm reading a lot of
• 16:27
  Doctor Who books right now, and I've read this alongside The
• 16:31
  Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter. I'm reading.
• 16:33
  Most You're Coming in the You're the Same song to my doctor.
• 16:37
  I'm right. I'm reading a book by a first
• 16:40
  time author with all of the traps the first time author
• 16:43
  falls into alongside an established populist author
• 16:48
  deeming to come down off high and write a Doctor Who book.
• 16:51
  And so it's flaws were so apparent when I was reading them
• 16:55
  side by side. So yeah.
• 16:57
  So I think context is key, isn't it?
• 17:00
  In in what you're reading alongside or before and after.
• 17:04
  Yeah, OK, well, so let's get into it then.
• 17:05
  So Joe, you had you struggled with this book.
• 17:10
  I did less, but not as much as I think you're going to think I
• 17:14
  did because I think it's sort of a tale of two halves.
• 17:17
  I think it is an average story and it is very awkwardly written
• 17:24
  and I would like to go into that later.
• 17:27
  I didn't find it particularly scary for a zombie story and I
• 17:33
  didn't think there was much engaging incident until the last
• 17:38
  50 pages and then it was almost like full throttle in the last
• 17:41
  50 pages and there was tonnes going on.
• 17:44
  But on the flip side of that, I thought it was great to have a
• 17:47
  book in this period where you've got a TARDIS team.
• 17:51
  And I do have issues with some of this TARDIS team even in this
• 17:54
  book, but they're working together as a team and that is
• 17:58
  not happening at this period of the books, right?
• 18:01
  Very often they're pushing against each other in pretty
• 18:05
  anxious ridden sort of ways. You've got an interesting period
• 18:08
  of history and a refreshingly exotic for us period of history
• 18:13
  to explore. And I thought there was a couple
• 18:15
  of well defined guest characters in this as well.
• 18:19
  I'm going to try and say the name Passion.
• 18:23
  Passion, Passion. I'm going to call him Passion
• 18:25
  with great, unjustified confidence.
• 18:28
  And Reichmann? Is it Reichmann?
• 18:31
  I thought they were both really well defined characters and I I
• 18:36
  thought they both had great endings as well.
• 18:38
  But alongside that, this absolutely has all the things I
• 18:42
  hate about this period of the new adventures.
• 18:45
  There's a rape reference in this book.
• 18:46
  There are truly offensive swear words in this book.
• 18:50
  Women are treated as punch bags in this book.
• 18:53
  There is brutal violence without apology in this book.
• 18:57
  A morally dubious Dr. An angst ridden ace without any sort of
• 19:01
  interrogation. You know it.
• 19:03
  It suggests there's going to be some interrogation and then the
• 19:06
  book just ends without any interrogation.
• 19:09
  And, and I know this bothers you, James, a shit load of
• 19:13
  continuity that just isn't needed half the time.
• 19:18
  I I again, maybe context is key here.
• 19:21
  I I'd slightly disagree because the continuity is there, but
• 19:24
  it's so much subtler than the continuity you get in most of
• 19:29
  the early new adventures. Well, Exhibit I then is that in
• 19:33
  one paragraph you get a reference to Victoria Kamakas
• 19:36
  brooch, the Dalek Time machine, Ian and Barbaras departure.
• 19:39
  And that's just in one paragraph.
• 19:41
  Yeah, and that's very early on in the book, but he but he gets
• 19:45
  he sort of gets that out of his system and it's not there are,
• 19:48
  I'm not disagreeing that there are some clunky bits of
• 19:51
  continuity in there. But go back to to to like the
• 19:55
  first four, the time Worm books that they've got kind of past
• 20:01
  doctors popping up on every other page and just, you know,
• 20:05
  an absolute litany of. Aren't I clever?
• 20:10
  I'm a writer who knows about Doctor Who, and I can fit in
• 20:12
  this thing like Ben Eronovich did in Remembrance of the
• 20:15
  Daleks. I mean, somehow I'm not him.
• 20:18
  So. So yeah, maybe.
• 20:20
  I told you about the Ivor Ryan James, but I think I think the
• 20:25
  biggest thing here is I just think it it suffers from every
• 20:31
  first time novelist trap you could possibly fall into.
• 20:35
  It's over researched and none of that research is left out.
• 20:39
  The sentences roll on and on and on in hideously awkward ways.
• 20:42
  I was actively fighting the sentences to try and find the
• 20:47
  story at times in this. There are big long paragraph
• 20:51
  side sentences in this which McKinsey himself, you know, 10
• 20:57
  books down the line would turn into 7 or 8 sentences.
• 21:02
  So, you know, the actual nuts and bolts of the story I really
• 21:06
  struggled with as well. So yeah, I I did have a lot of
• 21:10
  difficulty with this. However, I know you 2 didn't.
• 21:12
  So let's hand it to Michael now for all the things that he did
• 21:15
  like about this. Yeah, I mean, I would.
• 21:19
  I would. I did enjoy the book more than
• 21:21
  you based on the conversations we've had so far.
• 21:24
  I do agree though, it is not a book without flaws, and a lot of
• 21:30
  those flaws are I think, indicative of the first fact
• 21:32
  that he is a first time writer. And you know, we would get so
• 21:35
  much of David A McKinsey after this and a lot that would build
• 21:39
  on the types of writing he's trying to do here and the types
• 21:42
  of things he's trying to do and do it much better.
• 21:44
  But I do think you can see that early promise here.
• 21:47
  So I think to take a step back and make a big point first of
• 21:52
  all about this book and about the history which you've both
• 21:54
  touched on. I think a really good thing
• 21:57
  about this book is that it it recognises and seeks to address
• 22:03
  a massive blind spot in Doctor Who up to this point and argue
• 22:06
  arguably up to the present day, which is just it's almost
• 22:10
  complete lack of engagement with non Western history.
• 22:13
  Now some of that is for production reasons, some of that
• 22:18
  is a lot of that is just cultural in terms of what we
• 22:22
  would talk about at the time. Maybe some of it was for the
• 22:24
  best given how it sometimes turns out when they did try to
• 22:27
  go there, but I was. We wouldn't be able to watch it
• 22:30
  now, would we? Let's be honest.
• 22:32
  No, but I was racking my brain. I was trying to think Doctor Who
• 22:35
  stories on telly up to this point that have had that have
• 22:39
  been primarily set and engaged in non western history.
• 22:43
  The Aztecs. I mean it's quite impressive.
• 22:44
  That doesn't do Cortez. You know, we've got the Aztecs
• 22:48
  and I think I'm missing something obvious, but I can't
• 22:52
  think of another one. We touch on it bits here and
• 22:54
  there and it's usually a bit a bit difficult.
• 22:59
  I but I couldn't think. I couldn't think of anything
• 23:01
  else. I'm sure do do do let us know on
• 23:03
  blue sky how very wrong we are here.
• 23:05
  But but it's conspicuous and I think even to the present day,
• 23:09
  it still hasn't happened that much.
• 23:11
  And I think McKinsey sees and is right that someone should should
• 23:16
  try and address that. And I think he's being he's
• 23:19
  trying to be respectful in the way he does that.
• 23:21
  And he does. There is a forward to this book
• 23:23
  in which he he is at pains to talk about the amount of
• 23:26
  research that he has done to try and be as accurate as he can be
• 23:32
  in his depiction of the periods of vudon rituals.
• 23:36
  And, you know, even talks about some examples of where it's gone
• 23:38
  wrong in the past. However, I think that's also its
• 23:44
  biggest problem, which is that it is still a book being done by
• 23:49
  a a white Scottish author in Sterling Library.
• 23:52
  That's not a criticism of David A McGinty, but it does
• 23:55
  illustrate, I think more broadly an issue with this book and
• 23:59
  Doctor Who's problem about this whole about this whole matter.
• 24:02
  You know, if we look at it in the whole scope of Doctor Who, a
• 24:06
  non white writer writing about non western history, we've got
• 24:11
  the story in the engine and that's it.
• 24:16
  It would be like, I mean, I wrote a note, I said it's kind
• 24:19
  of, it would be like, I don't know, Paul Connell writing story
• 24:22
  in the engine, right? And I think it would come with
• 24:24
  the same issues that here that there was so much reference to
• 24:30
  race and colour in this in a way that I just don't know we would
• 24:34
  get as much of if this had been. Oh, I don't know, because I
• 24:39
  don't. Know.
• 24:40
  Because I think there is a because because of the kind of
• 24:48
  central historical moment that it's port.
• 24:51
  Well, it's it's portraying a few historical moments.
• 24:54
  And I want to ask about that in a moment, but but the fact that
• 24:56
  this is about the US Marines coming in and taking over a
• 25:03
  place that that conflict of race and culture is kind of central
• 25:11
  to that event, is it not? Yes, but sort of every
• 25:15
  character, it's not just the Americans, it's not just the
• 25:18
  Haitians, it's it's Benny, it's Ace, it's everybody is
• 25:21
  mentioning colour and race all the time.
• 25:25
  It was just sort of glaring out of every page.
• 25:28
  I don't know it just it it felt very apparent.
• 25:31
  I suppose my, I've got two kind of follow up questions.
• 25:35
  The, the 1st is however, kind of honourable, the intention to,
• 25:39
  and I do think it's, you know, I think Michael's making an
• 25:42
  important point, which is that we've got to write a really for
• 25:46
  the right reasons, trying to kind of broaden the, the canvas
• 25:49
  of of Doctor Who because he's written what I think in terms of
• 25:53
  genre. I don't think this is a horror.
• 25:55
  I think this is basically a spy thriller and it's got an awful
• 26:00
  lot of quite James Bondy stuff going on.
• 26:04
  It doesn't always feel like it because you've got the
• 26:06
  characters of the Doctor and Bernice in particular to to
• 26:12
  balance that. Or our Bernice Jesus Christ.
• 26:15
  But is is there an element of, for all that he's gone to the
• 26:20
  trouble of researching this area of history?
• 26:22
  It's a little bit like there's Bond film writers going where
• 26:25
  haven't we filmed recently? What's the most exotic place
• 26:29
  that we can take the franchise to this time round?
• 26:32
  Is it a little bit like cherry picking, you know, a bit of
• 26:37
  history that Doctor Who hasn't done yet?
• 26:40
  Bond. Did this right?
• 26:42
  Bond Did this, Yeah. Live and let die.
• 26:45
  I was gonna say there was a time when the one thing I heard about
• 26:49
  white darkness was people mentioning live and let die in
• 26:51
  reference to it, and I was reading this waiting for the
• 26:54
  moment where it was. My only cultural reference and
• 26:57
  it doesn't own. And although I agree with James
• 27:00
  that there is quite a lot of James Bond to this, specifically
• 27:04
  Live and let Die, it did just make me realise, Oh, that's the
• 27:07
  one place Doctor Who nerds have engaged with Ocean.
• 27:11
  Have you read Mckinty's other books?
• 27:13
  Like he's James Bond obsessed right?
• 27:15
  There is a ton of live and Let die in this.
• 27:18
  There's certainly a ton of James Bond in this, which which I
• 27:22
  think we should just touch on briefly.
• 27:24
  The I agree with James that it is Mckinty if there he wrote
• 27:27
  lots of different types of stories.
• 27:29
  You know, he was incredibly he was incredibly productive as as
• 27:32
  a Doctor Who author. I think I started to add it up.
• 27:35
  I've not got the list here, but I think so this came out in
• 27:37
  1993. I'm pretty sure between here and
• 27:40
  2005 when his last Doctor Who audio unregenerate came out.
• 27:46
  I'm pretty sure he has at least one at least just one book or
• 27:50
  audio play out almost every year.
• 27:52
  I think there was only like a couple of years where it didn't
• 27:54
  happen, and I'm sure that's just to do with publishing schedules,
• 27:57
  not his output. He covered every doctor as well
• 28:00
  every doctor to that point. Yeah, yeah, he did a lot.
• 28:04
  And then although he they varied a lot, I do think one of the
• 28:06
  things that carries through it, two things carry through David A
• 28:10
  McKee in T's works fairly consistently.
• 28:13
  One of them is that thriller sensibility, probably, I think
• 28:16
  seen most explicitly in Bullet Time, which is.
• 28:20
  Face of the enemy, Michael. Oh no, excuse me, Bullet Time is
• 28:24
  Doctor Who in John Woo action Hong Kong movie.
• 28:27
  It's fantastic. There was bullets spraying
• 28:30
  through that bank at the start of Face of the Enemy.
• 28:33
  God, I felt like a man reading that book.
• 28:35
  Does it say something about us? I think it does that The
• 28:38
  thriller that you like is the one that's ripping off the
• 28:40
  professionals, and the one that I like is the one that's ripping
• 28:42
  off Hard Boiled. OK, but what you're telling me
• 28:46
  is that is as a writer, then he did do that, that that James
• 28:49
  Bond thing. Where do I go geographically?
• 28:54
  Yeah, I think there is some of that and you know that again the
• 28:58
  things that are good about this are also indicative of the
• 29:01
  problems of Doctor Who has a HALT.
• 29:02
  So I think I would say micro David Mckinty doing this is I,
• 29:07
  I, I think, you know, well-intentioned macro.
• 29:09
  The problem is on the macro. It is, it is both good that we
• 29:12
  want to go somewhere we've not gone before, but we're also
• 29:16
  going here because we've not been here before and there's
• 29:18
  lots of signifiers and there's lots of archetypes that we can
• 29:21
  draw on. Even if so, I think one of the
• 29:22
  issues I have here as well is that when we say wanting to tell
• 29:27
  something that is true and well researched, you are also sort of
• 29:31
  still engaging with the stereotypes of that place.
• 29:34
  We're doing a a story set in Haiti that is all about voodoo,
• 29:38
  you know? Right.
• 29:39
  And, and, and, and he's not, I mean, fundamentally this is not
• 29:43
  a story that's about the US occupation of Haiti.
• 29:46
  That is a backdrop for a story that is about voodoo and
• 29:50
  something ancient and old and, you know, an, an alien threat,
• 29:55
  maybe a homegrown alien threat, a rather vague one, it has to be
• 29:57
  said. And and this kind of the
• 30:00
  trappings of a thriller on top of it.
• 30:03
  He's not writing historical. No, like the historical was more
• 30:08
  dominating than the voodoo stuff, though.
• 30:10
  I mean, I was getting massive The Mummy vibes.
• 30:13
  You know that Hammer film, it's called The Mummy and the Mummy
• 30:16
  appears twice in the whole movie.
• 30:18
  Like I was like, where are the zombies?
• 30:19
  I kept thinking to myself throughout this book, what's?
• 30:22
  Going on, I mean, they're the zombies are not are not there
• 30:24
  because you've got the. There's a zombie on the cover.
• 30:27
  Where are the zombies on the? Cover.
• 30:31
  Well, there is, though the truth is, for all that this is doing
• 30:34
  something Doctor Who is trying to do, something Doctor Who
• 30:36
  doesn't often tries to do. Maybe that's the best way of
• 30:38
  putting it. It is very traditionally Doctor
• 30:42
  Who, in so far as it is dressing up as horror without actually
• 30:47
  being horror. I mean, like we're all friends
• 30:49
  here, lads, ladies, listeners, most of us most of the time are
• 30:56
  nowhere near scared watching the quote UN quote scary programme.
• 31:00
  Doctor Who, right, The Auton, the Auton smashing out the
• 31:03
  windows, the Weeping Angels. If you're a bit younger, are you
• 31:06
  my mummy? No one pissed themselves
• 31:09
  watching for to doomsday, all right, Even things like that
• 31:12
  way, even even things like state of decay, right, state of decay
• 31:18
  isn't is a vampire is vampires, but is not scary and it's sort
• 31:22
  of and a lot of The thing is Doctor Who is not alone in doing
• 31:24
  it's lots of things that claim to be quote UN quote horror are
• 31:26
  not scary. They just go woo.
• 31:30
  They like because a friend written.
• 31:31
  You mean it's supposed to be about vampires?
• 31:33
  That isn't very scary either, is it?
• 31:35
  Cursor Fenrick is is sort of only scary on a sort of is on an
• 31:39
  emotional level when you really begin to think about it.
• 31:41
  Maybe a few reasons. Sophie Aldridge's performance is
• 31:43
  very scary on an emotional. Level, but we should start a
• 31:46
  timer running and we should actually get people to place
• 31:51
  bets for when the Sophie Aldridge alarm is going.
• 31:53
  To go just a little outside of this call, bit of trivia, James,
• 31:57
  Michael and I have a WhatsApp Fred, which basically is just us
• 32:02
  talking about Zachy Aldridge on a weekly basis.
• 32:05
  I like to say it as a fan. A fan WhatsApp group.
• 32:08
  That's right. Yeah, 2 Two of us must be said,
• 32:12
  mounting a constant defence Paul's reputation.
• 32:16
  Although I've noticed you stop getting as defensive, Michael.
• 32:19
  Now you're sort of like, I'm bored of this now, Jesus Christ.
• 32:22
  Oh, I just, I'm, I'm just beginning to feel more like
• 32:25
  somebody works in a nursing home at this point.
• 32:27
  Oh, he's on one today. Just leave him to it.
• 32:31
  You I knew you get there eventually.
• 32:35
  So yeah, it's sorry. No, after you finish, finish
• 32:38
  your. Oh, such polite.
• 32:40
  I think there is a point at which you can sort of see this
• 32:43
  as being the Doctor Who story where we do Voodoo and Haiti.
• 32:47
  And although he is making much more efforts to to research the
• 32:52
  the truth of those ceremonies than many might do, it is still
• 32:55
  ultimately Doctor Who does Voodoo because we've not done
• 32:58
  voodoo before. I do think you make a point
• 33:00
  there. So that being the case, is it
• 33:04
  appropriate for Doctor Who? I mean, I'm going to say ever to
• 33:10
  use a genuine atrocity as a plot point or a backdrop.
• 33:18
  But particularly given that this is not, this is not, oh, it's
• 33:24
  not one of those brilliant big Finnish historicals where
• 33:27
  actually it's not the massacre, is it?
• 33:29
  And it's not the Angel of Scutari.
• 33:32
  It's it's it's using this setting, but but as a
• 33:41
  essentially a kind of a Doctor Who he science fiction tale with
• 33:46
  a with a rich historical setting.
• 33:50
  One of the scenes in this book shows a notorious event which
• 33:54
  took place on the 27th of July 1915, just before the US
• 33:59
  occupation began, where on the orders of the then President
• 34:05
  Guillaume Sam, 167 political prisoners were brutally executed
• 34:11
  by Charles Oscar Etienne, the chief of the National police.
• 34:16
  Such a notorious event that that that that Etienne is now a kind
• 34:19
  of popular bogeyman. He's been renamed Chaloska and
• 34:23
  and people dress up as him and and this kind of grotesque
• 34:29
  parody of a tyrant. So evil is he considered those
• 34:36
  those those killings really happened and they are depicted
• 34:39
  in the book in, in, I would say pretty horrific graphic detail.
• 34:44
  Is is that appropriate in a Doctor Who book?
• 34:47
  Is it appropriate in any book with this subject matter?
• 34:51
  I think it is interesting to draw the massacre comparison and
• 34:55
  it's one that that had occurred to me as well.
• 34:59
  I think Doctor Who has engaged with terrible historical events
• 35:05
  enough that I think it it, it, it can be trusted to do it
• 35:10
  intelligently sometimes and respectfully.
• 35:16
  There is, of course, questions of when you're dealing with
• 35:19
  those events that are outside of, you know, your, your sort of
• 35:24
  home geography and history and politics when you're telling,
• 35:27
  you know, it's always complicated when you're quote UN
• 35:29
  quote telling someone else's story, right?
• 35:32
  And I, I don't pretend to be someone who's well enough versed
• 35:35
  or clever enough in these areas to get into that.
• 35:38
  I think I was a bit uncomfortable with some of the
• 35:41
  presentation of that here. And I think it sort of gets to a
• 35:46
  root of the problem with the Virgin New Adventures idea of
• 35:50
  the doctor. So this is very much, in some
• 35:53
  ways, it's probably one of the most straightforward depictions
• 35:57
  of the Doctor as quote UN quote Times champion, which was for
• 36:02
  those less familiar with the Virginia adventures, you know,
• 36:04
  you've heard all the stuff about the 7th Doctor being the master
• 36:06
  manipulator and, and all the rest of it.
• 36:09
  There was this idea which was, I think, quite in line with the
• 36:12
  influences of people like Alan Moore and Frank Miller and and
• 36:15
  and Neil Gaiman and other writers who were informing the
• 36:19
  people who who made the new adventures of how to sort of
• 36:22
  reinterpret your characters and to problematise them.
• 36:25
  And this idea of the Doctor as his role is to protect time and
• 36:31
  the flow of events. And here almost, almost without
• 36:34
  analysis. And I think that's part of what
• 36:36
  makes it uncomfortable. The Doctor's role here is to
• 36:41
  prevent those things that are against the order of time.
• 36:44
  So he is here to prevent the re emergence of this ancient entity
• 36:49
  that will destroy the world because that didn't happen in
• 36:52
  1915. But he is remarkably unconcerned
• 36:59
  with the fates of anyone whose death is historical.
• 37:03
  So these events happen and they are depicted in quite brutal
• 37:06
  detail. The book also ends, spoiler
• 37:09
  alert, with the US invasion of Haiti, which would last until
• 37:13
  the 1930s and was itself a horrendous occupation.
• 37:17
  And we do get some of some of that early detail here, but it's
• 37:20
  a, a, a terrible, terrible event of, of, of relatively late
• 37:25
  imperialism. The Doctor has no interest in
• 37:29
  that. And, and almost more worryingly,
• 37:31
  at no point is his lack of interest raised.
• 37:34
  You know, I think we have that. We have this, this team there
• 37:37
  of, of Ace and Benny and the Doctor all working together.
• 37:40
  But at no point do any of them turn around and go.
• 37:43
  And I know it's a cliche in Doctor Who, but you see why it's
• 37:46
  there. And no point to either of them
• 37:47
  examine him and go, but we can stop this.
• 37:50
  But this is awful. You knew this was going to
• 37:52
  happen. This is going to happen.
• 37:53
  Why aren't we doing something better?
• 37:54
  Or I don't want to be here. I do think it's a problem with
• 37:57
  the I mean, the books are aware that this, that the 7th Doctor
• 38:01
  is not necessarily a nice character.
• 38:03
  And there would be books that would near enough make him the
• 38:05
  villain. And in fact, McKinsey himself, I
• 38:07
  think, held this view, I think when he wrote Bullet Time.
• 38:11
  Bullet Time is a book in which the 7th Doctor is the villain
• 38:14
  and Sarah Jane Smith is the hero.
• 38:16
  And that was deliberate. He said his point was to go.
• 38:19
  You know he's the bad guy, right?
• 38:21
  And that's one thing when you're doing it consciously.
• 38:25
  I worry about it when it's so unexamined here, especially,
• 38:29
  especially when it's a historical event.
• 38:33
  It that's an interesting point about kind of showing an
• 38:36
  awareness of the doctors, whether it's complicity or or
• 38:42
  lack of interest, because I think there is of the slightest
• 38:45
  attempt to try and portray a motivation, if you like, for,
• 38:52
  for the for the doctor's inability to intervene.
• 38:57
  And it's an interesting, I don't think it works, but it's an
• 39:00
  interesting moment because he berates Ace for kind of
• 39:05
  bloodlust and reminds her that she can never kill anyone in
• 39:10
  recorded history. And she she comes back with what
• 39:12
  historically important person ever came from Haiti, which is I
• 39:17
  think there's a noble attempt here to show, you know, an
• 39:19
  ignorant Western response, which is, well, no one, no one
• 39:22
  important ever came from Haiti. And he responds, well, it was a
• 39:25
  Haitian who first deciphered the Rehansu language that allowed a
• 39:27
  peace treaty to be drawn up and entered an interstellar war with
• 39:30
  Earth in the 27th century. Unfortunately, at the same time
• 39:36
  as trying to say everyone's important, you know, wherever we
• 39:40
  go in the world, just because you haven't heard of them
• 39:42
  doesn't mean that they might not have an important one in
• 39:44
  history. Mcinty is sort of reducing the
• 39:49
  the one important person never to come out of Haiti into, you
• 39:52
  know, a sort of footnote in 27th history, rather than saying what
• 39:56
  I think we feel he should be saying, which is you shouldn't
• 39:59
  be killing these people because they're people and.
• 40:02
  There's no empathy at all, OK? And you look back at the 7th
• 40:07
  Doctors era, right? Some of the most powerful, some
• 40:10
  of the best moments are those quiet, melancholic moments when
• 40:13
  McCoy shows huge empathy for what's going on, no matter how
• 40:17
  grand his plans are. I think, again, I'm really sorry
• 40:20
  to say, keep saying this. I think Cursor Fenrick is the
• 40:23
  issue because there's a massacre in The Curse of Fenrick, and he
• 40:26
  shows 0 empathy for anybody that's dying in that story as
• 40:29
  well because he's got this big. I think a lot of these new
• 40:32
  adventures writers looked at the Curse of Fenrick and went, wow,
• 40:35
  that's great, yeah, right. But just took all the wrong
• 40:38
  lessons from it, you know, and especially this sort of grand
• 40:41
  chess master who is happy to let an entire base of people die in
• 40:47
  order to finish a chess match. You know, like, it's just not
• 40:50
  the doctor that I can get behind.
• 40:52
  There's an interesting comparison with History 101 by
• 40:54
  Mags El Halladay, which depicts the burning of, and I'm going to
• 40:59
  mesh this up, Guernica. Guernica, how do you say it?
• 41:03
  Guernica. Thank you.
• 41:06
  And that is all told through Fitz's eyes, right?
• 41:09
  With huge empathy and horror at what is happening.
• 41:13
  Whereas in White Darkness, it's it's McKinsey rather lavishly
• 41:18
  explaining the violence that's going on that I actually sensed
• 41:21
  a bit of lustre. Because he likes violence.
• 41:24
  There's a lot of violence in his books and he likes writing
• 41:28
  visceral violence. And so I think because that
• 41:32
  wasn't being channelled for a character, because the Doctor
• 41:35
  was making jokes on the very next page that time, and the
• 41:39
  Rani style misquotes on the next page, I'm like, fucking hell.
• 41:45
  Doctor read the room and he says very coldly, they're emptying
• 41:50
  the prison. That's it.
• 41:52
  That's all you get from him on the massacre that's just
• 41:55
  happened. That is not Doctor Who to me.
• 41:58
  So times champion. Fuck off, that's what I'm.
• 42:02
  Concerned, but also that I mean that violence which is depicted
• 42:07
  in gruesome detail is happening in between an unnatural
• 42:13
  violence, that this unnatural force ripping people apart in
• 42:17
  gruesome detail. There's something I think really
• 42:19
  tasteless about depicting a real atrocity as part of this collage
• 42:24
  of made-up atrocities. I think it just sort of it
• 42:28
  reduces it to to a less significant scene than it needs
• 42:32
  to be. Like the way he writes about it
• 42:34
  is heartfelt and he, you know, the moment of the of the
• 42:37
  massacre. He, he, he, he describes
• 42:44
  Etienne's laughter and and then comes to the 200, He says well
• 42:50
  over 200 there weren't, but well over 200 starved and unkempt
• 42:53
  prisoners, most of whom had been guilty of no more crime than
• 42:56
  wondering aloud what's a change of government would mean for
• 42:58
  them. So there's a, there's a slight
• 43:00
  kind of bit of empathy there. But ah, do you need this level
• 43:04
  of detail? Yeah, most of the prisoners were
• 43:07
  only wounded since the guards were I'll trained.
• 43:10
  And their cry for pity as the troops ripped open their
• 43:13
  quivering torsos, kicking the warm, awful aside, leaving
• 43:18
  clouds for buzzing insects to depend.
• 43:20
  We don't need all of that detail.
• 43:22
  I don't. Think we do and it's and it's
• 43:23
  and it's, it's cheap writing. I think that needs to be better.
• 43:28
  But also, but for me, fundamentally, even if, even if
• 43:35
  it was written like that and at the centre of a story that was
• 43:41
  entirely about this historical event, I think it would be much
• 43:44
  more justifiable. We we could call it out as being
• 43:48
  not as well written as it ought to be.
• 43:49
  But I think we could say, look, here is a a serious attempt to
• 43:52
  portray something that happened in history as appalling.
• 43:58
  Unfortunately, he he is trying to do that, but he's also trying
• 44:01
  to then show appalling things happening in, in the story that
• 44:04
  he's making up. And there's no delineation
• 44:07
  between them. So it's not the massacre.
• 44:14
  And maybe you have a better comparison even than the
• 44:18
  massacre, which is mostly about the massacre, though there is a
• 44:22
  kind of another plot running alongside that, which is about
• 44:26
  the Doctor, but something like the Peterloo Massacre, which is
• 44:30
  an astonishing piece of work from Big Finish.
• 44:34
  What you've got there is that kind of back to basics.
• 44:37
  Doctor Who, the TARDIS crew land in a bit of history.
• 44:40
  They can't do anything about it. They just have to watch and
• 44:42
  observe and we all learn something and it's not a
• 44:45
  comfortable experience, but that's the story.
• 44:48
  History one O 1 as well is literally about the perception
• 44:52
  of history and alien that is trying to define the perception
• 44:56
  of history. So you see that bombing fits for
• 44:58
  experiences it three times, but with a different emphasis each
• 45:02
  time. It's told in different ways
• 45:05
  every single time. And there isn't another horror
• 45:08
  alongside that. There isn't voodoo or science.
• 45:10
  There's a science fiction idea, but it's just the archivist
• 45:13
  attempting to understand history.
• 45:17
  Yeah. So maybe that maybe that is the
• 45:19
  issue. I don't know.
• 45:19
  Maybe there isn't, then a tasteful way of doing this
• 45:22
  within this book. Well, I, I, I don't disagree
• 45:27
  with anything you've said in slight mitigation, and it is
• 45:31
  only slight. This is a first time author and
• 45:35
  I think there are hints in there of.
• 45:38
  So I McKinsey is clearly not unaware of the horror of
• 45:41
  anything he is describing here. And I think that are hints in
• 45:45
  there, there are gestures towards a sort of thesis of how
• 45:50
  you might make these things merge.
• 45:52
  Because when you bring those fantastical elements into the
• 45:56
  historical setting, what you're often, how you can make it work
• 46:02
  is through metaphor or through it being a way of examining the
• 46:06
  historical things. So history one, and one's a
• 46:07
  great example of that. You know, that's, as you say,
• 46:09
  it's all about the different interpretations of history, how
• 46:11
  we can look at an incredibly horrific event but have very
• 46:14
  different conclusions about it, about its meaning.
• 46:18
  Actually something that occurs to me as well is incredibly
• 46:22
  violent Doctor Who but combat rock by Mick Lewis.
• 46:26
  But go with me because I actually interviewed Mick Lewis
• 46:29
  about that for Dylan Reece's Doctor Who too hot for T too hot
• 46:32
  for TV podcast. And he said that that was a
• 46:34
  deliberate effort to talk about to talk about terrible things
• 46:38
  that he had seen happen in the real world.
• 46:40
  But to but to talk about in science fiction.
• 46:42
  That's great. That's a grand tradition.
• 46:43
  Now you may not, you may like combat Rock, You may not.
• 46:45
  The views on that book diverge hugely, but you can see the same
• 46:49
  thing that's happening there relationship to history.
• 46:51
  And indeed in that book they examine the the approach and
• 46:56
  thoughts of a Victorian companion about imperialism.
• 47:01
  There are moments here. So the fantastical elements are
• 47:05
  sort of homaging drawn from both, let's be honest, popular
• 47:11
  culture depictions of voodoo, but also the works of HP
• 47:15
  Lovecraft. The the underlying threat is
• 47:17
  very much one of his, his Great Old Ones, his his elder things,
• 47:21
  these these beings from before time.
• 47:24
  It's it's cosmic horror that if the the body of this ancient
• 47:28
  being is buried beneath the island, but it's it's mind, it's
• 47:31
  consciousness is asleep on the time winds.
• 47:33
  And if it can be awoken, then it's mere awakening will be
• 47:37
  devastating for us because it is a it is life on a scale we do
• 47:42
  not understand. There are moments here where you
• 47:47
  can see a theme that is being bubbling away underneath it all,
• 47:51
  a thesis about overwritten cultures re emerging and that is
• 47:58
  his so so there's the opening of white Darkness is actually
• 48:01
  really good. It's this series of vignettes
• 48:03
  moving forwards through time, bringing us up to the present
• 48:06
  day of Haiti and actually Haiti and actually closer to the
• 48:09
  islands of of its past of of of the slave trades of events that
• 48:14
  little bit earlier. I think it actually starts off
• 48:16
  all the way back in the past with when the elder things were
• 48:18
  alive and then sort of forward through the slave trade in the
• 48:20
  Caribbean up to the the present day of the book.
• 48:24
  And there's AI think a key sequence.
• 48:28
  Where is it? Benny goes to the university
• 48:31
  museum and looks at the alongside the this sort of
• 48:36
  sci-fi artefacts that she's ostensibly there to look at,
• 48:39
  which are the sort of ancient EO scene writings on the Old ones.
• 48:44
  She also finds lots of artefacts related to the Arawaks who were
• 48:47
  the original actual native inhabitants of Haiti who were
• 48:50
  displaced by the the same colonialists who who brought
• 48:54
  African slaves. That's the Caribbean.
• 48:56
  Really interesting. It's really interesting, a book
• 48:59
  about that, if I'm honest, but God.
• 49:01
  It's it is really interesting and you can sort of see this
• 49:04
  idea of always further back there is another civilisation
• 49:09
  that was forgotten and that will re emerge.
• 49:11
  And I know it's fashionable to call everything folk horror, but
• 49:13
  it is a little bit of folk horror ish.
• 49:15
  It is especially within the subgenre of American folk
• 49:18
  horror, which is that this is literally an entirely colonial
• 49:21
  sort of thesis that this is entirely a colonialist illegal
• 49:25
  state. The whole the whole of European
• 49:29
  originated society within America.
• 49:33
  There's a world in which that that creature re emerging is the
• 49:38
  sort of revenge of the past type narrative that we have seen done
• 49:41
  in a lot of other areas. Much more I think much, much
• 49:45
  more greater articulation. And I have actually seen
• 49:48
  Lovecraft, for all that he's usually bashed as cosmic horror
• 49:51
  correctly, he has. I've also seen him discussed in
• 49:54
  the context of American folk horror as well, things like
• 49:56
  Shadow over Innsmouth, which is there's, there was something
• 49:59
  here before that we've all forgotten about, but it's still
• 50:02
  there. And it could come back.
• 50:04
  And your society and your sense of history is entirely
• 50:07
  artificial. It's there, but like so much in
• 50:12
  this book, it just, it doesn't come through in the end.
• 50:15
  It's. So I'll defined that threat.
• 50:19
  I was just like, well, what what is what are the stakes?
• 50:21
  If this thing gets out, it's like it's it's trouble.
• 50:24
  If it gets out, that's what I'll OK.
• 50:27
  What sort of trouble? No, no, we ain't got time to
• 50:29
  talk about that. You know, we're doing some James
• 50:31
  Bond stuff over here. OK.
• 50:33
  So by the end of the book, I was waiting.
• 50:35
  I was. So I was determined.
• 50:36
  And I remember I finished it what, about 40 minutes ago now?
• 50:40
  I was waiting for this grand confrontation between the doctor
• 50:45
  and mates and I thought, right, they're going to have it out and
• 50:48
  it's going to be sort of, you know, the Doctor Fenrich style
• 50:50
  thing. We're going to find out all
• 50:52
  about the old one. No, they literally talk for
• 50:54
  about two seconds and then he's blown to pieces.
• 50:57
  I was like, OK, what the hell is the old ones?
• 51:01
  Then why do I care? I was like, I don't know, it
• 51:04
  just wasn't well defined. Though if it was written now, it
• 51:07
  probably would end up being Fenrich, wouldn't it?
• 51:09
  And you'd why have you done that?
• 51:12
  Well, it's it is an issue with cosmic horror.
• 51:15
  HB Love Crosby, I think is still remembered so well for it
• 51:19
  because he did it quite effectively and there were
• 51:20
  others who did it as well. William Hope Hodgson, he wrote a
• 51:23
  lot of who's quite a key figure with weird fiction and and and
• 51:26
  cosmic horror. It's a particularly tricky type
• 51:30
  of horror to get right because it relies on the undefined as
• 51:33
  this kind of folk horror. To extent they are related.
• 51:36
  They are, but they both deal with fear of the the
• 51:40
  incomprehensible of the unknown that that's which sits outside
• 51:43
  our conception. But you're right that you can
• 51:46
  either lose it by not defining yourself well enough, or because
• 51:51
  the new adventures, God bless them, would return to this,
• 51:53
  well, many. Times.
• 51:56
  They would over define it and in fact they returned the great.
• 51:58
  Or was her name Pythia and all that, and the ancient dusty
• 52:02
  history of Gallifrey? Oh, but I'm thinking even more
• 52:05
  specifically. So we'd have all Consuming Fire
• 52:07
  by Andrew Lane, which I quite like, but even more so
• 52:12
  Millennial Writes The Missing Adventure by Craig Hinton would
• 52:15
  both return to this and they would they would like codify the
• 52:20
  Great Old Ones within Doctor Who mythology.
• 52:22
  So we'd sort of go from the complete opposite end of a lack
• 52:25
  of definition of this incomprehensible horror to
• 52:27
  actually they were the Time Lords of The Who escaped their
• 52:31
  dying universe and became and and they literally listed out.
• 52:35
  So Fenrick is has to be unspeakable.
• 52:37
  Who's a character from the godly mythology?
• 52:40
  You're joking. No, the the the the great
• 52:43
  intelligence is is what is Yog-Sothoth.
• 52:47
  I think the the, the, the, the nestines of the children of
• 52:52
  Sabnigarath or one of the others and it it, it kills it.
• 52:55
  So they even say in one of them, they even say oh, and the one in
• 52:58
  white darkness, that was Cthulhu.
• 53:01
  OK, do you know I've just read? The one in white darkness.
• 53:04
  I've just read, Yeah. We're going to discuss the 8th
• 53:07
  Doctor book, Unnatural History, right, Where the villain is
• 53:10
  somebody called Griffin the Unnaturalist, whose sole purpose
• 53:15
  in life is to pin down and stitched together the
• 53:19
  backstories specifically of all details so there's no ambiguity.
• 53:24
  And that's basically David A McGinty.
• 53:27
  Is Griffin the Unnaturalist? Isn't he all Craig Hinton and
• 53:30
  maybe Gary Ruskin? Well, they're the Trinity of
• 53:33
  Griffins. I feel like I can't invest in a
• 53:37
  in a in a vague simmering folk horror scenario when the people
• 53:45
  in the middle of it are actually undergoing real, significant
• 53:50
  events, you know? Like, hang on, hang on.
• 53:54
  Let me finish. Yeah, you know what I'm going to
• 53:57
  say because. Penrick is actually a really
• 53:58
  interesting comparison where where you say that that's I
• 54:01
  mean, I think you're absolutely right.
• 54:02
  New adventures Rice is going. That's great.
• 54:04
  I want to do that again. Evil since the dawn of time.
• 54:07
  I'll have a bit of that. This has got a lot of moments
• 54:09
  that kind of feel like it's got a, a, a subplot about chemical
• 54:15
  warfare. Basically, it's it's doing a lot
• 54:17
  of the tropes from Fenrick. Where Fenrick is really clever
• 54:21
  is that he doesn't write it about Alan Turing.
• 54:23
  He writes it about someone who's a bit like Alan Turing.
• 54:26
  He doesn't write it about the Nazis.
• 54:29
  He writes it about the Russians who are our allies.
• 54:31
  He puts it all in a, in a slightly different world.
• 54:33
  So the backdrop of the Second World War, which you know, first
• 54:36
  time Doctor Who had done that. But it nevertheless, it's not
• 54:39
  kind of the obvious Second World War backdrop that you might
• 54:42
  choose. He places it in a in a bubble of
• 54:45
  its own. So like a folk horror, it has
• 54:48
  its own community and the stuff that happens inside.
• 54:51
  Then you can invest in what is the story that's being told
• 54:54
  rather than thinking, yeah, but this is about to happen on on a
• 54:57
  an international scale. But it is still an ancient
• 55:01
  horror from the dawn of time, taking place alongside and in a
• 55:06
  science fiction story, with vampires taking place alongside
• 55:10
  real atrocities that occurred during the Second World War.
• 55:15
  The thing that Fenrick does really successfully is it's it
• 55:20
  it makes it, it re prioritizes everything.
• 55:24
  It it it, it draws on what you know from the from the period
• 55:29
  and what and it and it also capitalized on the fact that you
• 55:31
  know what's going to happen, that Ace is sitting there and
• 55:33
  knows how this resolves. And then it makes it about
• 55:36
  something else. And it and it genuinely does
• 55:38
  become just an A very highly atmospheric backdrop to the
• 55:43
  actual story. I actually think the thing fame
• 55:45
  where it gets right over this is it really makes you care about
• 55:47
  the pawns. So when those people start being
• 55:49
  bumped off, you are really affected by that story.
• 55:53
  Because I said there was a couple of guest characters here
• 55:55
  that stood out, but on the whole they were pretty faces or deeply
• 56:00
  unlikable characters. That's right.
• 56:02
  But, but, but I think, but I think the reason you're able to
• 56:04
  care about the poem so much is that they're not real people.
• 56:06
  You know it would be much harder to write the cursor Fenrick if
• 56:09
  one of the characters was Winston Churchill.
• 56:13
  I don't want. To give you more upsetting
• 56:16
  views, but if you go to the Wikipedia entry for Hester.
• 56:19
  Please. Hasta Cthulhu Mythos character
• 56:23
  first appeared in Ambro Ambrose Bierce's short story Height of
• 56:26
  the Shepherd in 1891. Subsequently, Robert W Chambers
• 56:30
  used the name in HP Lovecraft, was inspired by Chambers stories
• 56:33
  and included mention of Hasta and his stories.
• 56:36
  Hasta was later adapted in a variety of other tales within
• 56:38
  the Cthulhu Mythos, but right at the top pastor known by the
• 56:42
  epithets The Unspeakable One, the King in Yellow, Him Who is
• 56:46
  not to be named, Aceter, Zaster, Hausra, Fenrick, or Taiwan
• 56:51
  Fucking nerds. You bunch of Griffins.
• 56:56
  Who? I did it, I know it was one of
• 56:58
  you who's listening to this. Who put that there?
• 57:00
  Gary, I know it was you all right.
• 57:03
  She was created by Ambrose BS in 1891.
• 57:06
  You vandal. Remember, Gary Russell wrote
• 57:08
  that encyclopaedia, all right? He's put it all in a book.
• 57:11
  Standing beside Catsy, Captain Weber of the SMS, Rob Forgel
• 57:16
  leaned against the rail of the flying bridge, savouring the
• 57:19
  clean air now that the ship's garbage had drifted away.
• 57:22
  With them was another man tool, Ebony skinned and live.
• 57:28
  He wore a permanent smirk which unnerved the two Germans with
• 57:32
  its peculiarly detached quality. Weber indicates the point on the
• 57:37
  distant shoreline. We could have problems if our
• 57:40
  friend up there is watching this month.
• 57:42
  He isn't that your superiors request.
• 57:45
  I have had him removed from the field.
• 57:48
  The dark man's grim broadened. A shooting Andre or two sticks
• 57:53
  of dynamite? Weber asked with a faint smile
• 57:56
  of professional interest. Neither.
• 57:58
  Henri tapped the side of his nose.
• 58:00
  The ways you blanks used to kill people are far too disruptive.
• 58:04
  We believe that death should always be a part of life.
• 58:09
  The look on Weber's face at this remark was almost enough to make
• 58:13
  Henri laugh out loud that he stopped himself and also
• 58:16
  refrained from answering the unspoken question written on
• 58:19
  Weber's features Overhead. The stars wield.
• 58:28
  There were no stars in the space-time vortex, an
• 58:32
  imperceptible malstrom of everything and nothing.
• 58:36
  Through it, sweeping around the minor eddies and turbulences
• 58:39
  that swirled within, came one of the few vessels capable of
• 58:43
  traversing the corridors of eternity.
• 58:47
  The ship's captain monitored the readouts on a large hexagonal
• 58:50
  console unit in the centre of a large white room.
• 58:54
  His two human companions were off about their own business,
• 58:57
  somewhere down in the heart of the ship, while he guided them
• 59:00
  safely through the journey. He was a short, apparently human
• 59:05
  man in a brown jacket, checked trousers, zigzag pullover and
• 59:10
  Paisley scarf. His hands gently played the
• 59:13
  controls with the finesse of a concert pianist.
• 59:17
  He smiled slightly, allowing himself some small measure of
• 59:20
  pride that he finally seemed to have got the hang of operating
• 59:24
  this antique TARDIS of his. Satisfied, having checked the
• 59:29
  navigational readouts, he the Doctor settled comfortably into
• 59:33
  an overstuffed armchair which, crouched incongruously in one
• 59:36
  corner, glanced at the Ormeau clock and dugout.
• 59:39
  A book to read from one pocket. A nice tropical holiday would do
• 59:44
  them all good, he felt, and he knew just the place.
• 59:58
  Well, OK, could we move away from an I'll defined?
• 1:00:02
  Can I just say I have one more thing to say on the historical
• 1:00:05
  aspect, which is that weirdly he has these two genuine villains
• 1:00:10
  who committed actual atrocities and the way he kills them off in
• 1:00:13
  the book is not how they died in real life.
• 1:00:15
  In real life they were dragged out and they were murdered by by
• 1:00:19
  a mob. He allows President Sam to kill
• 1:00:21
  himself which is a is definitely kind of letting him get off
• 1:00:23
  lightly. And Etienne gets off lightly as
• 1:00:26
  well, doesn't he? But Sam was Sam was the one I
• 1:00:30
  noticed, yes, because I thought because I he is as, as you say,
• 1:00:34
  he's a notorious character, but the way he dies in this isn't,
• 1:00:38
  is not what happened at all. It's at all.
• 1:00:41
  No, it's bizarre. I was almost wondering, is that
• 1:00:43
  something we only found out afterwards?
• 1:00:45
  Like were the historical records still incomplete in 1993?
• 1:00:48
  Because. There's no reason that he
• 1:00:50
  couldn't have been killed, you know, if he'd wanted to give it
• 1:00:52
  a, a, a, a sci-fi twist, he could have had the zombie mob
• 1:00:56
  murder him. But there's he didn't need to
• 1:00:57
  change. That bizarre dramatic license?
• 1:01:00
  That isn't it. I didn't know, so I just figured
• 1:01:04
  I was learning a history lesson there.
• 1:01:05
  So thank you chaps. We just say in the forward that
• 1:01:09
  he, the one change he did consciously make was to reduce
• 1:01:12
  the length of time between Sam's death and the US invasion
• 1:01:18
  because there was about two weeks.
• 1:01:19
  So he said for dramatic reasons, I just constituted that down.
• 1:01:23
  I can't. Yeah, it's seemingly, it's a
• 1:01:27
  very strange choice if you know if if he.
• 1:01:30
  Sadly, Dave McKinsey is no, is no longer with us.
• 1:01:32
  But if he were it, it would be a question I would have for the
• 1:01:35
  interview. Can I move us on from an I'll
• 1:01:40
  defined horror to an extremely unfortunately well defined
• 1:01:47
  horror if I'm going? To say I love, Would I listen?
• 1:01:50
  No, it's the portrayal of zombieism in this book as
• 1:01:54
  reduced to a chemical formulae described in exquisite detail by
• 1:01:59
  1 character. And is the Star Trek fan in
• 1:02:02
  David A McKinsey coming out now? He loves a bit of techno bubble.
• 1:02:05
  The sofarize and Venom make all the difference since they
• 1:02:08
  disrupt the nerves by preventing sodium ions from passing into
• 1:02:11
  sails. Swallowing it kills in seconds,
• 1:02:14
  absorbed through the thinner membranes of the mouth without
• 1:02:16
  following, killing on hours. However, if absorbed by the
• 1:02:20
  osmosis through the skin, simply paralysed in a death like state
• 1:02:24
  for anything between a few. Oh God how boring.
• 1:02:28
  How can you possibly reduce zombies to something that
• 1:02:31
  tedious? Please discuss.
• 1:02:36
  I mean, The thing is, as I understand it with zombies is
• 1:02:42
  they are at least partly originally based on a observed
• 1:02:47
  phenomenon within Haiti, which was the use of psychoact or, or
• 1:02:54
  of chemical compounds to induce a highly susceptible
• 1:02:59
  directionable state within an individual.
• 1:03:03
  There's a so, so some of that, some of that at least is true in
• 1:03:06
  its basis of its research. And that got sort of fused with
• 1:03:10
  popular ideas of the ghoul and the revenant in popular culture
• 1:03:14
  through especially post George Romero.
• 1:03:16
  If you if you watch any zombie stuff pre Night of the Living
• 1:03:19
  Dead and post Night of the Living Dead, they're two
• 1:03:21
  different things. Michael, I don't need the
• 1:03:24
  forensic details of how zombies come to be.
• 1:03:27
  It's the living dead. Just scare the pants off me.
• 1:03:31
  That's a very Doctor Who thing to do is, is to take a a a
• 1:03:35
  mythological or traditional figure of horror and and put in
• 1:03:39
  a, a scientific explanation. That's you know.
• 1:03:43
  As Michael often says, though, James, as Michael often says,
• 1:03:46
  they should just hold their conviction with these things and
• 1:03:48
  have real gods and real horrors, you know, and real zombies and
• 1:03:53
  just forgo all the boring science because we don't need to
• 1:03:56
  make this book safe. Kids aren't reading this.
• 1:03:59
  This is all, you know, 17 year old geeks reading this.
• 1:04:02
  They can handle the horror. We don't need the science.
• 1:04:06
  I don't. Think so I think some of that
• 1:04:08
  comes back to perhaps what is the original sin of this book
• 1:04:11
  that was that was identified by James, which is the desire to
• 1:04:14
  have its cake and eat it in so far as we want.
• 1:04:16
  I want to do Doctor Who does does zombies, but I also want to
• 1:04:20
  try and be respectful to the reality of the of the history of
• 1:04:24
  this and the culture. And you sort of can't have both.
• 1:04:27
  You can't have Haitian zombies going and then also go, oh, but
• 1:04:32
  the reality of that within Vudan is.
• 1:04:37
  I mean, but look, listen, listen to this.
• 1:04:39
  When the zombies come to life with mouths open in silent pain,
• 1:04:43
  their muscles and ligaments cracking like gunshots, figures
• 1:04:46
  began pushing their way out of graves in an obscene parody of
• 1:04:49
  birth. I think that's a wonderful line,
• 1:04:52
  right? That's all I need.
• 1:04:54
  I don't need the DNA strains as well.
• 1:04:56
  Thank you very much. Talking of Star Trek, I'm
• 1:05:05
  threads that run straight through all of David, Eddie
• 1:05:08
  McKinsey, Doctor Who stuff. And the first is thrillers and
• 1:05:11
  the second is God love you geeky Star Trek deep cuts Joe, you
• 1:05:17
  love Star Trek even though it's boring.
• 1:05:18
  Did you catch? No, I did.
• 1:05:21
  You talk about there actually aren't that many Doctor Who
• 1:05:23
  quantity references. There are so many to the point
• 1:05:25
  where I think I recognised one of them and then I got really
• 1:05:28
  suspicious and I started Googling whatever things got
• 1:05:31
  mentioned. So Benny has seen carvings
• 1:05:34
  similar to those in the Necromonicon.
• 1:05:36
  Necromonicon is straight out of HP Lovecraft in this book.
• 1:05:39
  She she says, oh, I've seen them in places before.
• 1:05:43
  And she names various planets she's seen them in, including XO
• 1:05:46
  3. From.
• 1:05:48
  From the Oh you filthy casual from the Star Trek episode, what
• 1:05:53
  a little girls made of the ones with the one where Kirk holds
• 1:05:56
  the penis rock and goes round and round on the table and that
• 1:05:59
  set on a planet where that was once inhabited by race called
• 1:06:02
  the Old Ones. How many?
• 1:06:03
  Fare, you suggest that I would only know what episode you were
• 1:06:07
  talking about by mentioning a penis shaped rock.
• 1:06:10
  But you did. I did, yeah.
• 1:06:12
  Benny thinks she might win the Z Magnes Prize, which is from the
• 1:06:17
  Ultimate Computer. She wishes she she wishes she
• 1:06:20
  brought a tricorder. How did I miss that?
• 1:06:24
  And like, that's not I wish I had a tricorder.
• 1:06:26
  That's. Oh.
• 1:06:26
  Tricorders are something that absolutely exists where I'm
• 1:06:29
  from, and James mentioned one of them earlier.
• 1:06:32
  It was a Haitian who deciphered Rehansu ending an interstellar
• 1:06:35
  war in the 27th century. Rehansu, that's not a track
• 1:06:37
  reference. Rehansu is an alternative name,
• 1:06:40
  as I'm sure you're both aware, for the Romulans in a series of
• 1:06:43
  novels by Diane Wayne, the first of which includes a scene in
• 1:06:46
  which the characters watch Doctor Who.
• 1:06:47
  Of course he's read the track books.
• 1:06:49
  Of course he has. But hang on, if the characters
• 1:06:53
  watch Doctor Who in that But Doctor Who is real in this and.
• 1:06:59
  Then I shouldn't bore it. I shouldn't worry about it,
• 1:07:01
  Austin. I just sit back and enjoy the
• 1:07:03
  rides. I've gone boss eyed.
• 1:07:05
  Yeah. James, will you do me a favour?
• 1:07:08
  Yeah, well, because I feel like we've been quite mean about this
• 1:07:11
  book so far. Now I know.
• 1:07:14
  I think it was important to talk about that stuff.
• 1:07:18
  I just want to hear your more positive reading on it.
• 1:07:21
  Oh, well, I mean, you touched on some of the positive things.
• 1:07:24
  I think that, again, context is important here, but you are
• 1:07:30
  absolutely right to say that this is one of the books, one of
• 1:07:32
  the few books in this era where the Doctor and the companions
• 1:07:37
  appear to be actual kind of functioning human beings, or the
• 1:07:41
  Doctor's not a human being. But they are people you want to
• 1:07:43
  spend time with. And I think all three of them,
• 1:07:46
  you're going to contest at least one of them.
• 1:07:48
  But I think they are all three well written, particularly in
• 1:07:52
  the context of everything that's come around, where every writer
• 1:07:57
  of an early new adventure seems to struggle with the 7th Doctor.
• 1:08:01
  I mean, sometimes with the most bizarre results.
• 1:08:04
  And you're told things about him like I can't remember which
• 1:08:07
  books it comes from, but he levitates slightly everywhere he
• 1:08:09
  goes or he collects pinned. You know, people just say these
• 1:08:13
  nonsense things and then they write him sentences, which is a
• 1:08:16
  little bit like if you kind of ate a load of Ben Eronovich
• 1:08:19
  dialogue and then just vomited it out in a random order.
• 1:08:23
  And so none of them speak like real people.
• 1:08:25
  Whereas Mckinty in this book, to his credit, characterizes them
• 1:08:29
  really well. I think the doctor is
• 1:08:30
  characterized apart from obviously the what we've talked
• 1:08:33
  about the detachment, but as a, you know, in terms of his
• 1:08:37
  presence and his dialogue, there is there's real warmth there.
• 1:08:41
  And I think that he is certainly shown to care about his
• 1:08:47
  companions and the the characters who we grow to care
• 1:08:50
  about. I think that Ace, who is not a
• 1:08:57
  character who was ever designed go through as many iterations
• 1:09:02
  and stories as she has unfortunately gone through.
• 1:09:06
  I think he actually draws quite a compare a compelling version
• 1:09:12
  of Ace here and Ace who has. I mean, we've got to remember
• 1:09:16
  that the whole thing with Ace was she left and then in Deceit
• 1:09:19
  she returned and she was a grown up.
• 1:09:20
  And that's a good idea because this teenage Ace, we've sort of
• 1:09:28
  that we've done that and and it was a really shrewd thing for
• 1:09:30
  the new adventures to to to go, OK, she's going to spend some
• 1:09:33
  years away and come back as a woman only then everyone that
• 1:09:36
  continues to write her as a teenager.
• 1:09:38
  So it's even worse because it's like, well, we're imagining
• 1:09:40
  someone in what, in their mid 20s, they're approaching their
• 1:09:43
  30s, talking like this and having teenage strops whereas.
• 1:09:47
  Nobody is James. It's like they've watched The
• 1:09:49
  Curse of Henry up to the bit where she goes, no, it flops to
• 1:09:53
  the floor and then press stop. And then nobody watched the bit
• 1:09:56
  where she was rebirthed at the end and became a woman, you
• 1:09:59
  know, at the end of the story and actually came to terms with
• 1:10:02
  some of that stuff. Absolutely.
• 1:10:04
  That and, and the, and the this sort of unnecessary angst with
• 1:10:08
  the Doctor that it's just so tedious and you know, you, you
• 1:10:11
  read these books and you know, why?
• 1:10:14
  Why don't they just walk out of the TARDIS if they hate it so
• 1:10:16
  much It's. Here, tentatively, she does say
• 1:10:19
  a couple of oh of, you know, is this one of your grand schemes
• 1:10:22
  and all of this. There's a little bit of that
• 1:10:24
  and. And I certainly I flagged that
• 1:10:25
  up. Yeah.
• 1:10:26
  What what is it? She.
• 1:10:30
  It's a snarky comment about weird shit, isn't there?
• 1:10:33
  And you're like, you're choosing now to talk about weird shit.
• 1:10:37
  But there are some really good scenes with Ace.
• 1:10:40
  I mean, he very intelligently splits up the characters and
• 1:10:43
  they each play to their strengths.
• 1:10:45
  And while Benny is doing the museum stuff.
• 1:10:47
  And then I mean, Benny is really well characterized here as well.
• 1:10:51
  And she gets captured and is really kick ass in the way that
• 1:10:55
  she escapes capture. And then kind of she she uses a
• 1:10:59
  mixture of of intelligence and guile to get herself out of this
• 1:11:05
  situation and, and with a very kind of witty commentary
• 1:11:08
  throughout. But Ace, who is clearly kind of
• 1:11:11
  the the character with the the least going for her in this
• 1:11:17
  trio. Nevertheless, she is given
• 1:11:20
  enough to do as, as, as someone who has military experience.
• 1:11:25
  She's given some rough stuff to do.
• 1:11:27
  And yet she's characterized as someone who talks tougher than
• 1:11:32
  maybe she feels and has a conscience and is still
• 1:11:34
  wondering about these things. You know what, what she's lost,
• 1:11:37
  what she could still have. And she has a really good
• 1:11:40
  conversation with Pesci and about his wife.
• 1:11:42
  And that's a moment of self reflection for her.
• 1:11:46
  That's that's. The moment of self reflection
• 1:11:49
  for her in this book, but it's a really great moment where she's
• 1:11:52
  like, I could have all these things, you know, And then like,
• 1:11:57
  like I said, she then commits brutal acts and the acts of the
• 1:12:01
  book and everyone's sort of wagging their finger at her and
• 1:12:04
  she's, and then the last page, she sort of goes, oh, what am I
• 1:12:06
  becoming? And he literally ducks out of
• 1:12:09
  the consequence of dealing with any of it.
• 1:12:14
  Yeah, I, I, no, no, I, I do. I do agree.
• 1:12:17
  I think it's one of the books where New Ace is less
• 1:12:21
  embarrassing than she could be. Marginally, Michael.
• 1:12:24
  Marginally, but I think it's at least because David N McKinsey
• 1:12:28
  realises that she is an unrealistic character, a
• 1:12:31
  character who is on TV is, is praised by those of us who are
• 1:12:34
  fans as being much more of an attempt to be mimetic, to be to
• 1:12:40
  to to have the appearance of reality than than many
• 1:12:42
  companions had had before. Goes away and comes back as an
• 1:12:45
  unreal character. And I, I don't think the problem
• 1:12:48
  actually is that new Ace is written as a teenager by
• 1:12:52
  authors. I think the problem is she's
• 1:12:54
  written as a quote UN quote woman by a bunch of Gen.
• 1:12:58
  X hormonal 20 something year old heterosexuals.
• 1:13:03
  And it's a problem. It arranged the word woman to
• 1:13:05
  make wank fantasy. I mean, I'm sorry to say I think
• 1:13:08
  so. And this is, this is Doctor Who
• 1:13:12
  with the Virgin New Adventures trying to be up to date and
• 1:13:15
  trying to to tap into geek pop culture, which I think we're
• 1:13:20
  still slightly separate at that point in a way the TV series had
• 1:13:23
  perhaps failed to do for much of the 1980s.
• 1:13:26
  It does mean it's also absorbed some of it since I've been
• 1:13:29
  reading some of Dark Horse comics.
• 1:13:31
  Ghost comics from this same period.
• 1:13:34
  Ghost is a fantastic idea for for a superhero, right?
• 1:13:38
  She's a woman who is murdered and but can't remember how comes
• 1:13:41
  back as a ghost with dual pistols because it's the because
• 1:13:45
  it's the mid 90s and basically goes on a kind of feminist
• 1:13:48
  revenge while trying to investigate her own her own
• 1:13:52
  death and murder. The problem is it's all constant
• 1:13:56
  sexualisation. She wears a costume where she's
• 1:13:58
  got her boobs out. It's all about Playboy stuff.
• 1:14:01
  It's exactly the same thing, but three years.
• 1:14:02
  Sure you're not talking about new ways?
• 1:14:05
  It's exactly the same thing. It's it is three years after
• 1:14:08
  this Tomb Raider came out, right?
• 1:14:09
  Lara Croft, deliberately designed to be a action hero
• 1:14:14
  that women could get behind. Influenced by again John Woo by
• 1:14:17
  Jurassic Park by Tank Girl. Toby Guard, who created her,
• 1:14:21
  walks off the series after the first one because all the
• 1:14:24
  marketing turned her into a booby lady who got naked all the
• 1:14:27
  time. Three years after this, After.
• 1:14:29
  This two first two men a game was 1996.
• 1:14:33
  This was 1993. Are you saying we could trace
• 1:14:35
  the lineage of Lara Croft back to New Ace?
• 1:14:38
  No, I don't. You get off the wiki, you get
• 1:14:41
  off the wiki. Whoever took that?
• 1:14:43
  I'm doing it now I'm editing it. I but I'm saying this was, this
• 1:14:47
  was a sin that was seen across it.
• 1:14:48
  I think what Mckinty, let's bring it back to white darkness.
• 1:14:51
  What Mckinty gets right is that she is an unrealistic character.
• 1:14:54
  So he sorted, but he, I think he sort of treats her as
• 1:14:56
  unrealistic in the same way that Sarah Connor is unrealistic in,
• 1:15:00
  in Terminator 2, right? In the first one, she is a, she
• 1:15:03
  is a vulnerable real woman. And by the second one, she's
• 1:15:06
  become a, a Terminator killing machine.
• 1:15:08
  And so he has her like literally wandering around the armoury
• 1:15:11
  with a shopping shopping trolley, just throwing guns in.
• 1:15:15
  Benny can. Benny can be the the empathetic
• 1:15:18
  human being. But we are in a war zone, so I
• 1:15:21
  think her character makes sense here that she's got weapons and
• 1:15:24
  she's defending herself. And there's a wonderful bit
• 1:15:26
  where it's described as I'm here to look after them, I protect my
• 1:15:30
  friends. And if I'd have gone down that
• 1:15:32
  route with new ways, I mean, I still wouldn't have liked all
• 1:15:34
  the violence and shooting people every 5 minutes.
• 1:15:38
  But at least there's a motive. I mean will you listen to this
• 1:15:41
  just as one line? I howled when I read this.
• 1:15:44
  Ace on the other hand still had the Browning of the knife but
• 1:15:47
  had added two packs of C4 plus to her pockets.
• 1:15:50
  Over her shoulder was slung the homemade submachine gun and she
• 1:15:54
  had assembled in the TARDIS lab. And my only note was if she
• 1:15:58
  dress him down in this book. I mean, come on man, how many
• 1:16:01
  weapons do you need? She also says smeking doesn't
• 1:16:05
  say. Smegging that's it's it's a
• 1:16:07
  novel of its time, isn't? It and shit, she says the word
• 1:16:10
  shit on every upper page. I think I was going to say in
• 1:16:15
  1993, a Red Dwarf reference merely makes you an incorrigible
• 1:16:19
  geek and not an old incorrigible geek.
• 1:16:23
  I would like the points alright that I got the red dwarf
• 1:16:25
  mentioned, but not the Star Trek ones.
• 1:16:27
  Alright, I'm a geek, but I'm not that deep.
• 1:16:30
  Will you be leaving your other podcast?
• 1:16:33
  Certainly not, no. Sorry James, we totally derived
• 1:16:38
  you being positive you've. Reminded me that when I reviewed
• 1:16:40
  Lucifer rising I described it as like Red dwarf without the
• 1:16:43
  jokes. I I also remember that in
• 1:16:47
  Lucifer rising, Lucifer rising is the first book after aces
• 1:16:50
  return and she throws herself into these drops.
• 1:16:53
  I mean, I'm, I'm upset by hearing New Ace described as a
• 1:16:56
  wank fantasy because that's upsetting for lots of reasons,
• 1:17:00
  but also upsetting that anyone thinks that that's how a woman
• 1:17:03
  woman behaves. And, and I do also recall in
• 1:17:06
  Horizon, there's a moment where the doctor muses was Ace growing
• 1:17:10
  up a little too fast, and then they're going, no, she's not
• 1:17:13
  growing up at all. But that is coming after and I
• 1:17:17
  will never, ever stop mentioning this scene in Deceit when
• 1:17:20
  Appleton Dak literally on the bridge of a Starship, reaches
• 1:17:24
  between her legs and squeezes her vagina.
• 1:17:27
  And Ace literally goes oh, that's our Dak.
• 1:17:31
  And I'm like what? What are we doing?
• 1:17:34
  What? Suddenly that Peter Darvel Evans
• 1:17:37
  thing makes sense, right? He wrote that one.
• 1:17:40
  Yeah. I don't know.
• 1:17:42
  I don't know. But I see what there was 1 scene
• 1:17:44
  and I think he's Ace and the doctor.
• 1:17:47
  They they do the autopsy together, don't they?
• 1:17:49
  Yeah, that was a fabulous scene. And it was a scene as well where
• 1:17:54
  you can do all the forensics because they're literally doing
• 1:17:57
  an autopsy and it's the two of them working so well together.
• 1:18:01
  I'm like oh, more of this please.
• 1:18:03
  Well, it's funny. It's a funny one because I mean,
• 1:18:05
  I, I take your point about the way it's written and where there
• 1:18:09
  are lengthy sentences and a cramming in certainly of kind of
• 1:18:14
  what, what is research has involved.
• 1:18:17
  But the interesting thing about this, this book, it's like a
• 1:18:19
  piece of archaeology, isn't it? I mean, you, you've got, I
• 1:18:22
  think, really beautiful sentences rubbing shoulders with
• 1:18:27
  really inexperienced writing. And I think you're seeing the,
• 1:18:31
  you know, the the potential of a writer and you're, let's be
• 1:18:34
  fair, you're seeing a first time writer probably not being given
• 1:18:40
  the editorial help that most first time writers would get.
• 1:18:45
  Definitely. And you know, so I think I, I
• 1:18:50
  actually, there's a lot that is impressive about it, but I was
• 1:18:53
  you pick this up. I, I don't like I wrote down at
• 1:18:56
  one point, I can't stand all the stuff in italics.
• 1:18:58
  What's it for? Now, Michael has pointed out
• 1:19:01
  that it is kind of giving you those, those layers, those
• 1:19:03
  different kind of particularly the, the opening bit in italics
• 1:19:07
  is, is giving you a, the, the distant past and he's about to
• 1:19:11
  go into a prologue, which is the less distant past.
• 1:19:15
  There is a a really pretentious element of all of these early
• 1:19:22
  new adventures. Again, they all do it where
• 1:19:25
  rather than starting off by just writing the damn story, they
• 1:19:28
  have a page and 1/2 in italics written in the most kind of
• 1:19:31
  obtuse. You know, it's not clear what's
• 1:19:33
  going on here, but the the thing in the darkness and the stars
• 1:19:37
  and the galaxies and the. James there is some of that in
• 1:19:41
  the Curse of Fenrick novelisation as well.
• 1:19:43
  You know I'm. Aware of that and again and
• 1:19:45
  again. Look, the this is this is where
• 1:19:48
  it begins. I, I think I would still argue
• 1:19:51
  that Ian Briggs does it better and he doesn't do it for such a
• 1:19:55
  so long. I mean, I really, I've, I really
• 1:19:59
  like those, or at least I did when I, when I last read that
• 1:20:03
  book, which is when I was a teenager.
• 1:20:05
  So maybe I was just very, very pretentious when I was 15, but I
• 1:20:08
  really liked the added depth and kind of.
• 1:20:12
  Breadth that those interludes give The Curse of Henrik book,
• 1:20:16
  and I think they're kind of varied enough and inoffensively
• 1:20:19
  brief. There's a real penchant for
• 1:20:23
  writing lengthy, obtuse, pretentious swaddle in these
• 1:20:28
  books. And I thought, you know, when I,
• 1:20:30
  I, when I picked this up, I was like, have I made a dreadful
• 1:20:33
  mistake putting this? On No.
• 1:20:34
  Because because the prologue begins on a small backwater
• 1:20:37
  world amidst an Infinity of stars.
• 1:20:39
  I'm like, that's sounds like the opening of an episode of
• 1:20:42
  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• 1:20:44
  I remember this being a historical what's going on?
• 1:20:46
  And then he goes into the most beautifully written, the 18th
• 1:20:52
  century prologue, the ship and it's atmospheric.
• 1:20:54
  And I'm just like, what? What an editor should have done
• 1:20:58
  was just put a line through that first sentence and say you don't
• 1:21:02
  need that. OK, we, we know that the
• 1:21:04
  Doctor's a time traveller. That's the, you know, no one's
• 1:21:07
  reading this who doesn't get that.
• 1:21:08
  Let's let's go all in on the historical context and really
• 1:21:12
  just make this an atmospheric prologue set in 17, whatever it
• 1:21:16
  is. What was that first line again?
• 1:21:22
  With the prologue On a small backwater world.
• 1:21:25
  A small backwater world? You mean Earth, don't you?
• 1:21:28
  On a small backwater world amidst an Infinity of stars, a
• 1:21:32
  child's eyes stared in trepidation of a small gap in
• 1:21:35
  the wood that had been in his sky for weeks.
• 1:21:37
  You can see how that would be filmed.
• 1:21:38
  It would start on the stars and then you'd kind of zoom in
• 1:21:41
  through the gap in the in the ship and you'd and suddenly
• 1:21:43
  you'd be in a ship some. Happened to have an exercise
• 1:21:46
  book of the stories that I wrote when I was 12 years old.
• 1:21:48
  You know, the first line is almost exactly the same.
• 1:21:51
  You know, I mean, there, there is a an element to stressing
• 1:21:57
  some poetry in the writing here that perhaps a more seasoned
• 1:22:00
  writer would go, yes, that is a little pretentious.
• 1:22:04
  In the underexplored, unfashionable Western.
• 1:22:11
  But he can write beautiful sentences.
• 1:22:14
  I loved General Charles. Oscar Etienne moved heavily
• 1:22:18
  through the swirling crowds of the fish market in much the same
• 1:22:21
  way as an icebreaker passes through pack ice.
• 1:22:27
  I, I, I, I agree. I think what I think what he
• 1:22:29
  shows a real skill for here as well as dialogue.
• 1:22:32
  And I think there is genuinely, genuinely quite a few funny
• 1:22:36
  lines. And it's so in a way that a lot
• 1:22:39
  of these early new adventures spectacularly fail to because
• 1:22:42
  they are of the time and it's all very serious.
• 1:22:44
  There's just so many little bits like that American invasion you
• 1:22:48
  mentioned. Exactly.
• 1:22:49
  They haven't changed much then all the bits.
• 1:22:55
  That interloper who was in the car calls himself the doctor.
• 1:22:58
  Apparently he's on his way to the cemetery.
• 1:23:00
  Make sure he gets the maximum use out of it.
• 1:23:04
  There's a good bit at the start and again, talking of the the
• 1:23:06
  TARDIS crew actually kind of feeling like a a close knit
• 1:23:09
  group. The Doctor gets changed into a
• 1:23:13
  silk shirt and cravat at the start and you've got Ace and
• 1:23:16
  Benny just staring at him and making A Man in Havana reference
• 1:23:21
  to. To which he responds that that
• 1:23:26
  he wasn't expecting to see Lee Van Cleef and Alan caught to me.
• 1:23:31
  But sorry, we should touch on this because this.
• 1:23:32
  Is the linen the linen suit, isn't it?
• 1:23:34
  This is. This is where he gets his linen
• 1:23:36
  suit. And I think so I I put this out
• 1:23:39
  on Blue Sky a couple of years ago thinking I was saying
• 1:23:41
  something that everybody knew, but I think I discovered
• 1:23:44
  something. His linen outfit is Sylvester
• 1:23:47
  Mccoy's out costume in the 1987 movie Two Kinds of Heat.
• 1:23:54
  What? Yeah, check it out what we will.
• 1:23:58
  Everyone Googling two kinds of heat.
• 1:24:00
  It's not good audio, but. Was it three kinds of heat?
• 1:24:05
  I think he wears A linen suit, you know, and that straight to
• 1:24:08
  video convention thing that he did with Lisa Bauman as well,
• 1:24:11
  you know, when they're off in Egypt.
• 1:24:13
  Do you remember that? Oh, that must have been after
• 1:24:15
  this though. Well, no, but it's deliberate,
• 1:24:17
  right? He's wearing that suit again.
• 1:24:19
  He has. Just so far taken me to ABBC
• 1:24:22
  bite size on heating and cooling.
• 1:24:24
  I think we'll. Be I'll plug the gap whilst
• 1:24:26
  you're Googling by saying I may not have got the great
• 1:24:30
  confrontation between the Doctor and mate at the end of this
• 1:24:33
  book, but what I did get was a bit.
• 1:24:34
  I could absolutely see Sylvester McCoy performing, which was what
• 1:24:38
  kept you. How did you get ahead of me?
• 1:24:40
  I took a more direct route. There isn't 1.
• 1:24:43
  The Doctor threw the blaster and drilled a shadow in the hole by
• 1:24:46
  way of demonstration. There wasn't one.
• 1:24:49
  It is a funny book at times. My apologies.
• 1:24:52
  It is three kinds of heat. There.
• 1:24:54
  He is 0. My God.
• 1:24:55
  This is great audio, but listen if you.
• 1:24:58
  Google, look at the cover. If you Google right now, we can
• 1:25:03
  put it on the socials when this goes out.
• 1:25:05
  Sylvester McCoy. Three kinds of heat.
• 1:25:07
  That is from a live action new adventure.
• 1:25:09
  Show us again quick on your phone.
• 1:25:12
  It's the same. It's the second canny.
• 1:25:16
  Has he got the brolly? No, that would be unusual.
• 1:25:18
  Wouldn't. It don't shoot up.
• 1:25:20
  Why does he stay in the Is this? This is the first linen mention
• 1:25:24
  of the linen suit in the New Adventures.
• 1:25:26
  Yes, which he keeps until whenever it is they switch him
• 1:25:29
  into the TVM outfit. But they don't have him in a
• 1:25:33
  cravat. They put a tie on him.
• 1:25:36
  Yes, yes. No, you're right.
• 1:25:37
  You're right on that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:38
  Would he have stayed in the linen suit?
• 1:25:41
  I think I like it. I think it's a good look.
• 1:25:45
  I. Think a distinctive look for the
• 1:25:47
  books, doesn't it? That's different from the TV
• 1:25:49
  show. And, you know, is he still
• 1:25:51
  wearing the jumper? No, he's not.
• 1:25:53
  No, whether it was just they wanted us, the artists couldn't
• 1:25:57
  be bothered to draw those question marks.
• 1:25:59
  But they kept the brolly. I mean, come on.
• 1:26:02
  I think it's, I think it's, I actually think the the linen
• 1:26:05
  suit is a smart move. I think it's a good thing.
• 1:26:06
  I think it's a better costume for the 90s than what he was
• 1:26:10
  actually given in the TV movie. And I think it is striking how
• 1:26:14
  similar it is to the sort. It's what they would have put
• 1:26:17
  Sylvester McCoy in if he'd been cast in 2005, not 1987.
• 1:26:23
  I've got to say. In the film, his hat looks a
• 1:26:26
  little bit too big. Fair.
• 1:26:27
  Or he's? Or did he grow into his hat, I
• 1:26:28
  wonder? Looks like he's about to be
• 1:26:30
  drowned by his hat. I was like, I I agree with you.
• 1:26:33
  He can, he can write a sentence. Yeah, sometimes.
• 1:26:39
  But there was a section of the book which went first person,
• 1:26:42
  right? And I was like, oh, hurrah, that
• 1:26:44
  can't be, you know, those endless strings of sentences
• 1:26:46
  abusing commas. And then I, you know, they read
• 1:26:49
  like this when Monsieur Sally, the manager comma left with the
• 1:26:54
  last of the workers comma, he left us with sufficient
• 1:26:57
  provisions for several weeks comma and we've orders to ensure
• 1:27:01
  the company equipment remains in working order comma and to
• 1:27:04
  protect it from any damage which might have been caused by either
• 1:27:06
  government or rebel forces in the conflict, which we were
• 1:27:09
  certain comma and unfortunately rightly so, comma would burst
• 1:27:13
  upon us. I was like fucking hell man, use
• 1:27:16
  a full stop. But if you read it, if you read
• 1:27:19
  a diary entry from 100 years ago, people did write all posh
• 1:27:23
  like that didn't because the, you know, the art of formal
• 1:27:26
  writing was much more taught in schools.
• 1:27:28
  And if you were educated, you, you, you were writing a
• 1:27:31
  document. You weren't just writing for
• 1:27:32
  yourself. I I just kind.
• 1:27:34
  Of managed to be historically accurate.
• 1:27:36
  I want it to be readable. I really thought that the
• 1:27:38
  Francois Journal entry added some colour.
• 1:27:41
  I, I just thought, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
• 1:27:43
  brief scene for a character who's not going to be in it for
• 1:27:46
  very long. I thought it creates a
• 1:27:49
  character. I think there are moments of
• 1:27:50
  this where I feel like it's a bit Malcolm Hulk.
• 1:27:53
  He pay, he, he draws a complete character really using some kind
• 1:27:57
  of simple tricks just to kind of give him added color.
• 1:28:00
  And in this instance it's it's a little, it's a scene and and it
• 1:28:05
  works for me. But also that bit that it's the
• 1:28:07
  journal of, of Francois Combe, isn't it?
• 1:28:09
  It's the, the people at the French customs house who were
• 1:28:14
  who, who, who were sort of early victims of the zombies before
• 1:28:17
  this all begins and they go and investigate the murders and they
• 1:28:19
  find his journal. I don't think that's just a
• 1:28:23
  pastiche of the time. My reading of that is I'm pretty
• 1:28:26
  sure that's the bit where he's just doing a straight up HP
• 1:28:29
  Lovecraft pastiche because Lovecraft did that.
• 1:28:33
  Quite a lot of those sorts of firsts.
• 1:28:34
  There's recordings from the people who to whom terrible
• 1:28:38
  things befell. You know, it's now such a sort
• 1:28:40
  of cliche. That was one of his sort of
• 1:28:42
  hallmarks. If you think of things like the
• 1:28:44
  Mountains of Madness, that's all sorts of that.
• 1:28:47
  And I, I think that's the bit where he goes, OK, I'm going to
• 1:28:50
  give myself 1 little bit where I get to write like Lovecraft.
• 1:28:54
  And I'm glad he just does it for that.
• 1:28:55
  And he sort of interpolates it as a sort of artifact within the
• 1:28:58
  narrative rather than giving us a whole book.
• 1:29:02
  The elongated sentences, it's not something that he altogether
• 1:29:05
  drops. I think it's there throughout
• 1:29:08
  all of his books. I think maybe come the 11th
• 1:29:10
  tiger when we're maybe 20 books in, he he really has learned to
• 1:29:14
  sort of structure paragraphs quite well.
• 1:29:16
  But like, you know, listen to this northwards along the
• 1:29:19
  harbour, comma in the direction they were slowly walking, comma
• 1:29:23
  ace could make out large warehouses of foreign companies.
• 1:29:26
  Comma one in the centre of the wide open harbourfront itself,
• 1:29:30
  comma the two Storey US Customs receivership squatted silently.
• 1:29:34
  Comma it's business slow. There's just so much happening
• 1:29:38
  in that sentence also. Joe, have you tried when you
• 1:29:40
  read it, not thinking the word comma when you?
• 1:29:44
  No, I'm making a point, James. Joe was brought up reading
• 1:29:49
  telegrams. Another another lovely bit of
• 1:29:53
  dialogue. Another lovely dialogue to
• 1:29:56
  cleanse your palate. You haven't introduced yourself.
• 1:29:59
  There isn't much point. You're not going to live long
• 1:30:01
  enough to have to introduce me at parties.
• 1:30:04
  Also drop dead molecule mind. Oh God, there is some.
• 1:30:11
  Sentence as well oh, I liked Bernice saying this isn't
• 1:30:13
  precisely the sort of living history I'd hoped for she's
• 1:30:17
  really fun like when when you get a kind of commentary of
• 1:30:20
  what's going on with Benny and it's this slightly sardonic here
• 1:30:25
  we go again tone. I think that that makes it sing.
• 1:30:28
  I was going to ask, you think that the prose gets easier as it
• 1:30:31
  goes on? Because it seems to me like he's
• 1:30:32
  poured all of his energy into the 1st and and actually
• 1:30:37
  presumably he's got less time to meet his.
• 1:30:39
  The last third, he's suddenly writing short scenes in quick
• 1:30:44
  succession and it feels like it's suddenly very pacey and all
• 1:30:49
  and he's got a handle of all the characters and they're all sort
• 1:30:51
  of coming together in the club. And I did think those last 50
• 1:30:54
  pages read, I mean, I, I sort of flew through the last 50 pages
• 1:30:58
  in a way that I waded through Toffee through the 1st 50, yes.
• 1:31:04
  It is remarkable the degree to which and this this is probably
• 1:31:07
  an issue with the book, which is that I do think a lot of the
• 1:31:10
  ideas that are setting up are interesting, if not well
• 1:31:13
  executed. A real issue though also is just
• 1:31:17
  that they don't come together in the in the climax and in the
• 1:31:19
  last third is sort of a speed run of how can I get to the end
• 1:31:23
  of this narrative to the point where the Doctor even gets a
• 1:31:26
  laser gun and starts burning through walls to get to the.
• 1:31:29
  I love that. But you have all this stuff
• 1:31:33
  here, overlapping cultures, HP Lovecraft, the cosmic, the
• 1:31:36
  history. Let's think about the history of
• 1:31:38
  this. But the then you more isn't any
• 1:31:41
  of that. It's a James Bond shootout in a
• 1:31:45
  secret in a secret shit pen. Now I am very firmly of the
• 1:31:49
  belief that no story is worse for having a secret submarine
• 1:31:52
  pen in it, but it is. But it is just the Marines all
• 1:31:56
  come rushing in and start shooting all the Germans and
• 1:31:59
  it's. Just a big it's a big explosion.
• 1:32:02
  There's also this device and it suddenly goes very steampunk
• 1:32:05
  just for a few pages where he's got cogs and mirrors and it's a
• 1:32:09
  little bit kind of evil of the Daleks meet.
• 1:32:11
  It's the climax of Hudson Hawk. Did he think this was going to
• 1:32:16
  be his only Doctor Who book, so he had to get everything in
• 1:32:19
  there that he wanted? Horror, evil since the dawn of
• 1:32:22
  time, historical atrocities, you know, everything.
• 1:32:26
  James Bond, it's all going in. That device is fascinating
• 1:32:29
  because that device is introduced as a as a device used
• 1:32:34
  by the villain who, if not we spoken much about called
• 1:32:36
  Lemaitre, who is there's actually quite interesting idea.
• 1:32:40
  She says that so psychic powers, psionic powers exist within the
• 1:32:43
  Doctor Who universe, but he says, well, not everyone has
• 1:32:45
  them. But this is a device that allows
• 1:32:47
  people without psionic powers to basically effects them by
• 1:32:49
  looking into these mirrors. And it's how it's how he is
• 1:32:52
  commanding everyone. And so the doctor just just
• 1:32:55
  tilts some of the mirrors just slightly out of the axis.
• 1:32:58
  And he says, oh, when the mitral works looks into this, he will
• 1:33:00
  be trapped forever in his own mind.
• 1:33:02
  And sure enough, the major comes back, looks into it and is
• 1:33:04
  trapped for everyone in his own mind.
• 1:33:06
  You think what a great Doctor Who resonates solution, turning
• 1:33:08
  his power back on himself. Oh and how horrific traps his
• 1:33:11
  own mind forever. Then Lema just goes knocks the
• 1:33:15
  mirrors back and fuck us off. You think?
• 1:33:17
  I'm sorry, I thought, I thought there was going to be some sort
• 1:33:19
  of ironic Demi Moore there. My, my biggest reaction to the
• 1:33:23
  climax was, is that it, I was just expecting something
• 1:33:27
  apocalyptic to happen and there was sort of a bomb went off and,
• 1:33:31
  and then we left. I thought, OK, that's that's
• 1:33:34
  sort of every 70s Doctor Who story.
• 1:33:37
  Also was was he told at the last minute that mate couldn't be the
• 1:33:42
  master? Because it's really set up that
• 1:33:45
  mate is going to be the master? Well.
• 1:33:47
  It's like McKinsey book as well, Michael.
• 1:33:49
  A none too subtle reference to the master isn't there?
• 1:33:52
  His registered name is G Sorry he's called Mates but his
• 1:33:55
  registered name is G Lemaitre and there's a bit of a doctor
• 1:33:59
  goes mate I wonder. I think he literally says I was
• 1:34:04
  half expecting someone else when he meets him.
• 1:34:07
  Although mate is is the one who's set up in the prologue,
• 1:34:10
  isn't he? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's
• 1:34:12
  odd. It's.
• 1:34:12
  Really fit with the master. There is an appearance by a
• 1:34:15
  master, though I don't know if you spotted that one in this
• 1:34:17
  book early on. Deets.
• 1:34:21
  The EU boat, EU boat personal member at the start of the book
• 1:34:26
  who gets transferred off because he's going, he's the one who's
• 1:34:29
  very officious and he gets transferred off EU boat.
• 1:34:32
  He says I'm being transferred somewhere else.
• 1:34:33
  And he has the introductory scene with Reichman.
• 1:34:36
  That's Anthony Ailey's character from the film The Land That Time
• 1:34:39
  Forgot, which is set in I think, 1918.
• 1:34:43
  The depths of your research? No.
• 1:34:45
  No bounds. Michael Mills.
• 1:34:48
  I don't like that my brain works this way.
• 1:34:50
  But Doctor Kunj, at one point when he does some hypnotism and
• 1:34:54
  he goes, yes, I had a very good teacher or something like that.
• 1:34:57
  Was that in this one Doctor Who books lately?
• 1:34:59
  It could, might not have been this one.
• 1:35:01
  Oh lad. What's that?
• 1:35:02
  What? What film was that?
• 1:35:04
  Anthony Ailey, The Land that time Forgot it's from the 70's.
• 1:35:07
  The 70s version of it. I'm sure there's enough material
• 1:35:11
  there that Ian Levine could take footage from The Land That Time
• 1:35:15
  Forgot and footage from Three Kinds of Heat and actually
• 1:35:18
  create another confrontation between the Master and the 7th
• 1:35:21
  Doctor. Oh, don't give him ideas.
• 1:35:24
  Oh lads though, you know what? That same bit where the Doctor
• 1:35:29
  has his confrontation with mate quote he gave the chess set a
• 1:35:33
  suspicious glass. That was hilarious.
• 1:35:38
  Now that's learning from the cursor.
• 1:35:39
  Fenrick in the right way. And I do have a suggestion to
• 1:35:44
  both of you. I wonder if and we got a couple
• 1:35:47
  of books to read ahead, Lung Barrow and Charms of Midnight.
• 1:35:50
  But I do wonder if we should read at some point in Sanctuary
• 1:35:57
  by David A McKinsey, because that's his next new adventure.
• 1:36:02
  And that's where Rebecca Levine is editing his books and not
• 1:36:08
  Peter Darville Evans. And that is where New Ace has
• 1:36:10
  been jettisoned and he focuses almost entirely on Beneath.
• 1:36:16
  And he writes another historical atrocity without any of the
• 1:36:21
  science fiction elements. I would be really interested to
• 1:36:25
  compare and contrast. That does sound interesting,
• 1:36:29
  definitely up for that. Oh, OK.
• 1:36:31
  Well, that's one of you, yeah. Do you rate that one, Joe?
• 1:36:35
  I think Sanctuary, the ending of Sanctuary, is probably the most
• 1:36:38
  powerful thing McKinsey ever wrote in all of his October
• 1:36:42
  Yeah. I've I've not read it, I would
• 1:36:44
  love to, so I'd be definitely up for that.
• 1:36:46
  Also the thing that we tend to forget now, but I remember being
• 1:36:48
  told when I read it, is human nature is in part to do with
• 1:36:53
  them dealing with the fallout from Sanctuary.
• 1:36:55
  Isn't it the set in the book version of human nature?
• 1:36:58
  The Doctor becomes human to help him understand what Benny went
• 1:37:01
  through in that book. And it just proves that sort of
• 1:37:06
  guns and violence and bond and evil since the dawn of time
• 1:37:09
  aside, he can write a heart on the page.
• 1:37:13
  Or I mean, it will tear your heart out at the end of that
• 1:37:15
  book. I'm not going to say what
• 1:37:17
  happens, of course. But yeah, I think it would be an
• 1:37:18
  interesting comparison because I think he's got over his first
• 1:37:22
  book Nerves at that point as well.
• 1:37:25
  But I think it's that guiding hand that you talked about,
• 1:37:28
  James. It's just so much more assured.
• 1:37:31
  And it's a woman who's saying no, no, no, no, we're not
• 1:37:35
  writing wank fantasies for 17 year old boys.
• 1:37:37
  We're going to write a mature woman who's going through
• 1:37:40
  something real. And it's quite different I
• 1:37:45
  think. We've we've covered a lot here.
• 1:37:50
  Are there any other areas of this book that we need to talk
• 1:37:54
  about before we round off and go our scary ways?
• 1:37:59
  I wish. Oh.
• 1:38:02
  An old thing is that HP Lovecroft does appear in this
• 1:38:06
  book, The American surgeon Howard Phillips.
• 1:38:10
  HP Lovecroft being Howard Phillip Lovecraft is described
• 1:38:15
  as looking and sounding like HP Lovecraft.
• 1:38:19
  And he's a sort of supporting character.
• 1:38:21
  He's there. He's there in the university, an
• 1:38:25
  American work working there, sort of, you know, emblematic of
• 1:38:27
  their presence. But it's really weird as an
• 1:38:30
  indie joke because one thing if you know two things about HP
• 1:38:35
  Lovecraft. The first is the cosmic horror
• 1:38:38
  Cthulhu. That is what that is not dead,
• 1:38:41
  which kind of turn a lion over strange Melania or even death
• 1:38:44
  may die, all that stuff. The second thing you know is he
• 1:38:47
  was a horrendous racist even by the standards of the time.
• 1:38:51
  It's a very like so much in this book.
• 1:38:54
  It seems to hint at bigger ideas and themes, but he's a little
• 1:38:58
  bit of a non secateur in it's it's execution.
• 1:39:00
  He's not meant to be HP Lovecraft.
• 1:39:01
  He's named after him. He looks like him, but his role
• 1:39:04
  doesn't really seem to. I think there is an awareness of
• 1:39:07
  the of the deeply problematic nature for some of Lovecraft's
• 1:39:09
  writing, but that character doesn't seem to relate to it at
• 1:39:13
  all. Elizabeth Sandifer actually
• 1:39:15
  wrote a quite good essay about white darkness and she touches
• 1:39:18
  on the role of Lovecraft in it quite a lot.
• 1:39:20
  And she makes a quite interesting observation as well
• 1:39:23
  that Lovecraft is an odd one to throw in here as a character
• 1:39:27
  because he he was a he was deeply racist and some of the
• 1:39:32
  stuff his his short story Red Hook.
• 1:39:34
  I don't recommend it, but if you do read it, it is, even by the
• 1:39:36
  standards of the time, astonishing.
• 1:39:39
  He's not going to throw into a story that is ultimately about
• 1:39:41
  imperialism because as, as Elizabeth Sandoval puts it, he
• 1:39:45
  wouldn't have believed in imperialism because imperialism
• 1:39:47
  suggested that you could quote UN quote improve people.
• 1:39:50
  And he just fundamentally believes people were different
• 1:39:53
  races were different levels of, of, of evolution.
• 1:39:58
  It's really strange. And I, I just struggle to draw a
• 1:40:01
  conclusion about why it's here because as with that stuff about
• 1:40:04
  about. Overwritten cultures of history
• 1:40:08
  repeating and all the rest of it, and the master being in it
• 1:40:11
  or not being in it, it's all sorts of set up and then there's
• 1:40:15
  no pay off. It's really difficult to work
• 1:40:17
  out what it's doing in this book because it's just not given any
• 1:40:21
  resolution. Is it, I mean it's presumably
• 1:40:24
  it's there because of the the old ones and the kind of
• 1:40:27
  thematic link there? Yeah.
• 1:40:29
  And if it were just the name, I think, oh, it's just, it's just
• 1:40:33
  a fairly obvious homage. But he's described as looking
• 1:40:36
  like him, as sounding like him. It feels like it needs to be
• 1:40:39
  doing something. And maybe it is as simple as the
• 1:40:42
  first time writer of I'm going to throw in all my ideas.
• 1:40:45
  But there is a, there is a strange thing.
• 1:40:47
  The last chunk of this book just does not pay off.
• 1:40:52
  So much of what has been set up in the first part, you'd almost
• 1:40:54
  think that he suddenly realised he was running out of time
• 1:40:56
  before the deadline. So I'm just going to have
• 1:40:58
  people, I'm going to have the Marines run in and shoot
• 1:41:00
  everyone. It's very strange.
• 1:41:04
  Seriously, check out those paragraph lengths at the start
• 1:41:06
  and the end. All right, he's in a hurry at
• 1:41:08
  the end. On the subject of bad taste,
• 1:41:13
  there are certain things I just don't want to see in a Doctor
• 1:41:16
  Who book under any circumstances.
• 1:41:18
  The line? Well, you'll become a vegetable,
• 1:41:21
  unfortunately, but I'm sure our guards, so lovely this far away
• 1:41:24
  from home will find A use for you even in that state.
• 1:41:27
  I don't need rape references and Doctor Who ever.
• 1:41:31
  And the liberal use of the N word, which I just recoiled from
• 1:41:37
  the page. And I, I don't care if that is
• 1:41:40
  historically accurate, OK, it is offensive to see it in print in
• 1:41:46
  a Doctor Who book. I I literally had a visceral
• 1:41:49
  reaction to seeing that on the page, especially being delivered
• 1:41:52
  as offhandedly as it was at times.
• 1:41:56
  And I don't know if this is him trying to be edgy, in which case
• 1:42:03
  that's problematic, or I don't know if it's it's just there in
• 1:42:07
  terms of historical accuracy, but I still think that's
• 1:42:10
  problematic. I think it's him trying to be
• 1:42:12
  unflinching in the same way as he is, I think with good
• 1:42:17
  intentions, trying to show historical atrocity in in all
• 1:42:21
  its gory detail. I think he is trying to show
• 1:42:23
  racism in all of its unpleasant detail.
• 1:42:28
  And I, you know, I don't, it's casual because I think he
• 1:42:31
  expects us, rightly expects us to be horrified by that, I
• 1:42:36
  think. In History 101 OK Max o'halla so
• 1:42:39
  this there's a lot of parallels. I didn't realise until this
• 1:42:41
  conversation. Angie is captured in that and
• 1:42:47
  tortured and there's just one racist slur and it's so it's
• 1:42:52
  delivered so sharply and her reaction to it is so she's so
• 1:42:56
  horrified by it. But the line is, and yeah, this
• 1:43:00
  is horrible, but I'll say it. It's like, shut up, you black
• 1:43:03
  bitch or something like that. Yeah.
• 1:43:05
  And it is horrible, but it's I just think it's on the right
• 1:43:09
  side of the line. Yeah.
• 1:43:12
  And it's dealt with with appropriate seriousness.
• 1:43:15
  It's just so off hand here. Absolutely.
• 1:43:19
  And we should say that the first use of that word is in the mouth
• 1:43:22
  of Woodrow Wilson, and then it filters down to the American
• 1:43:27
  soldiers. And again, there's this bungled
• 1:43:29
  attempt to show Benny's not horror at it, but just sort of
• 1:43:34
  mystification because she's not heard the word.
• 1:43:36
  Because racism doesn't exist in the future.
• 1:43:38
  Well, she says, doesn't she? Is Is that slang or something in
• 1:43:41
  this? I'm like, just don't make it
• 1:43:43
  worse. And it does make it worse.
• 1:43:45
  I think that it's another instance of the New Adventures
• 1:43:49
  writers taking the wrong lessons from at the Cartman era, which
• 1:43:55
  which handles racism with varying degrees of success.
• 1:43:58
  I think you. Know oh so much better.
• 1:44:02
  So much. Better, but absolutely so much
• 1:44:04
  better, I think. I think when racism is written
• 1:44:08
  by Ben Aronovic and it's a, you know, a subtle scene with Ace
• 1:44:12
  finding a sign in the living room, I think that's astonishing
• 1:44:15
  television, particularly for the time.
• 1:44:18
  I I don't think that Ace's attitude towards race is always
• 1:44:21
  portrayed that subtly. I think that you could
• 1:44:25
  legitimately criticize some of those lines, some of those
• 1:44:29
  moments, as being a little bit naive, but they were doing
• 1:44:33
  something completely new in Doctor Who.
• 1:44:35
  To make the direct comparison in prose, I've just read and talked
• 1:44:38
  about Ghost Light, and the opening passage of Ghost Light
• 1:44:42
  is a Young ace in Manisha's Garden of that Burnt Out House,
• 1:44:48
  and it's one of the most vivid depictions of a reaction against
• 1:44:53
  racism you're ever going to see in print in Doctor Who.
• 1:44:57
  And ACE works in that in that. Brilliantly.
• 1:44:59
  I mean the Ace, the character of Ace makes complete sense in that
• 1:45:03
  context, doesn't she? But there's a maturity to the
• 1:45:06
  right in there that I don't always see here or in this
• 1:45:11
  period of the new adventures. Yeah.
• 1:45:13
  This is not a problem that's exclusive to the New Adventures
• 1:45:15
  and I you know, what is it in cold?
• 1:45:17
  It's in the Big Finish Play cold.
• 1:45:18
  It's when A says I've got a bit of a problem with racism.
• 1:45:21
  They're with Nazis. I really hate Nazis.
• 1:45:24
  No, that's right. OK.
• 1:45:25
  Because I love them, you know? Dude.
• 1:45:30
  Yeah, so I, I, I feel like again, it comes from a, a, a, a
• 1:45:36
  place of the best intentions and the, the, the least experience
• 1:45:42
  and not tight enough editorial controls because because it's
• 1:45:47
  ultimately it is again, it's like the violence, it's at best
• 1:45:50
  it's cheap. It's the tortured effect.
• 1:45:53
  I think it's a we can do this, so let's just get away with it,
• 1:45:57
  you know? And I think some of that
• 1:46:00
  actually to bring that back to my previous point is, is why I
• 1:46:03
  was, if you're bringing HP Lovecraft into a story that is,
• 1:46:09
  is, is explicitly depicting racism, an author who is so
• 1:46:13
  who's who's, who's, you know, racist beliefs make some of his
• 1:46:17
  stuff frankly unreadable in the modern world.
• 1:46:21
  And you're not addressing that. You bring in a character who is
• 1:46:24
  him and he's getting along very well with the with the Haitians.
• 1:46:29
  And it seems to be one of the most sympathetic American
• 1:46:31
  characters. It feels this was not the
• 1:46:35
  intention, but you could almost misreaders attempting to be some
• 1:46:38
  sort of apologia for for him somehow like, oh, look, in this
• 1:46:41
  fictional version, he's all right, which is is deeply
• 1:46:45
  uncomfortable. But I think it's I think it's a
• 1:46:47
  product of a young writer at a time when these things were not
• 1:46:51
  always well articulated. He said he's not alone.
• 1:46:52
  This the Doctor Who new adventures are not alone in the
• 1:46:54
  in these problems, just not actually joining the dots of
• 1:46:58
  what's being put there on the the page and it being very
• 1:47:01
  uncomfortable in that. Michael with the Lovecraft
• 1:47:05
  invasion. Yeah, the big Finnish audio
• 1:47:09
  which apparently quite maturely attempted to present a balanced
• 1:47:16
  view of Lovecraft. Yeah, but with still criticism,
• 1:47:19
  of course, of his racism. Went to Cardiff and they were
• 1:47:24
  like, no way. You rewrite this whole script
• 1:47:27
  and you make him the villain of this.
• 1:47:29
  And so you literally have the 6th Doctor, you know, making
• 1:47:33
  huge bombastic speeches about how Lovecraft is the worst man
• 1:47:37
  he's ever met in his entire life and, and all of this and it, the
• 1:47:41
  subtlety is just thrown out the window.
• 1:47:43
  But like the comparison from that to this, I think no one
• 1:47:46
  gave a shit here, right? I mean, I think, yeah, of the
• 1:47:50
  two extremes, that's definitely the better one, because it was
• 1:47:52
  not OK, like he was not OK. And I don't think you could, you
• 1:47:55
  know this. It did lack nuance, so I will
• 1:47:58
  say that. But also actually worth saying,
• 1:48:02
  you know, it's it's sort of as very sad evidence that this is
• 1:48:05
  was not the only book to suffer from this.
• 1:48:08
  If you read or listen to Human nature now, you can go and buy
• 1:48:12
  it from Amazon. You can go and download it from
• 1:48:14
  Audible. There will be a bit from that.
• 1:48:16
  That was that has been cut from every subsequent edition.
• 1:48:19
  It was cut from the BBC ebook as well, where that same
• 1:48:24
  unfortunately racist term is used in the original version,
• 1:48:28
  which in the original book, which was two years after this,
• 1:48:30
  there's a there's a point where where Joan says it and John
• 1:48:33
  Smith is sort of shocked by by its use.
• 1:48:37
  And again, there's just a sort of naivety and a very clumsy
• 1:48:41
  attempt to address that here, which I think now, not that, you
• 1:48:45
  know, we, I think things are very far from perfect, let's
• 1:48:48
  face it. But I think there is an
• 1:48:49
  awareness that these things are imperfect and that you can make
• 1:48:53
  these points without resorting to phrases that actually
• 1:48:56
  different people in your audience, in your readership
• 1:48:59
  will sadly still have experience of being called.
• 1:49:03
  It's not a historical thing. It is real.
• 1:49:05
  And it's not just something which is at the end of the day,
• 1:49:09
  a yellow page pot boiler. It's it is inappropriate.
• 1:49:13
  The fact that an editor read that and didn't even consider
• 1:49:19
  the effect that that word may have on a portion of the
• 1:49:22
  readership means I don't think these books are being edited
• 1:49:26
  with much care at this point. Yeah, yeah, the, the, the at
• 1:49:32
  once allows that through. And at the same time he's just
• 1:49:35
  going, oh, you've got, you've got HP Lovecraft over there.
• 1:49:38
  No, no, no. Nothing to say about racism
• 1:49:41
  there. And I'd like to think it's would
• 1:49:44
  it just never would have happened in the BBC range went
• 1:49:47
  once the BBC were slightly more invested in what was going out.
• 1:49:52
  It's it's better, but things still slip through the net.
• 1:49:55
  Not that word. But you know, Michael, you've
• 1:49:59
  read Warmonger Ave. like that. There's a rate reference on
• 1:50:02
  every other page in that. Like there are taste lapses in
• 1:50:05
  those BBC books. Yeah.
• 1:50:09
  But I, I think things, things have improved, Yes.
• 1:50:12
  And I think just just where it's going forward, 5 or 10 years,
• 1:50:17
  we're just in a different place where some of this stuff just
• 1:50:20
  wouldn't fly no matter how few people are reading it.
• 1:50:24
  Yeah, and and compare kind of human nature when it when it,
• 1:50:27
  when it finally hits the television screen and the racism
• 1:50:32
  is absolutely there and handled in a way that probably kind of
• 1:50:36
  as shocking, if not more shocking for bit for being so
• 1:50:40
  unconfrontational, so casual and, and, and thrown away.
• 1:50:43
  And that's a very powerful moment.
• 1:50:45
  But there's but there's no need to to to use shock tactics for
• 1:50:49
  that attitude to come across with to have that effect.
• 1:50:52
  I mean, Michael, we've read Damaged Goods the book, Yeah.
• 1:50:55
  Now go listen to the big Finnish audio, right?
• 1:50:58
  What's considered acceptable 2 decades later is something very
• 1:51:02
  different indeed. They were never going to put
• 1:51:04
  that book out as an audio as it was originally presented.
• 1:51:08
  Well, indeed. And Russell T Davis, they they
• 1:51:11
  they wanted to do as part of the BBC website e-book range.
• 1:51:14
  And Russell T Davis just said no, he said no, that that that
• 1:51:17
  book is not appropriate for the audience that Doctor Who is
• 1:51:20
  aimed at now. Mummy, what does this mean?
• 1:51:23
  Going down a back alley and a suck job?
• 1:51:25
  I don't understand. Oh please, please.
• 1:51:29
  Shall we shall we wrap up with some final thoughts?
• 1:51:33
  God, I feel like we've gone everywhere with this book.
• 1:51:35
  How wonderful. Just, well, I think, I think if
• 1:51:39
  I can begin, then I think that demonstrates the quality that I
• 1:51:44
  spoke about at the start, which was that I think that this is a
• 1:51:46
  rich book. And that is simultaneously one
• 1:51:51
  of the reasons why it is so refreshing when if you ever do a
• 1:51:54
  New Adventures marathon, God help you if you if you do.
• 1:51:58
  But I mean, certainly at the point that I encountered it in
• 1:52:02
  reading them in order, it just came as such a breath of fresh
• 1:52:06
  air. And for all that there's an
• 1:52:09
  awful lot going on too too many things, too many conflicting
• 1:52:12
  ideas, too many conflicting styles.
• 1:52:14
  There's a lot of fun to be had here as well.
• 1:52:16
  And I, you know, this Bondy kind of conclusion, and although
• 1:52:25
  we've we've questioned kind of how James Bond this book really
• 1:52:28
  is, it's definitely got some of the tropes there.
• 1:52:31
  And we should say it's also got Benny walking out of the river,
• 1:52:36
  having out of the sea and then saying, if any of you start
• 1:52:41
  singing about mango trees and honey, I'll break your kneecaps.
• 1:52:47
  But the thing that I was enjoying was that what the
• 1:52:49
  doctor is doing objectively is basically a James Bond final act
• 1:52:55
  where he's leaping around, burning his way through walls,
• 1:52:58
  planting bombs suspended over water.
• 1:53:01
  It was fun. It was really fun.
• 1:53:04
  But also by that stage, because he's well characterised in this
• 1:53:07
  book, you have this image of the 7th Doctor doing it, basically
• 1:53:11
  like McCoy in Greatest Show. So you're not picturing this
• 1:53:14
  agile secret agent, you're picturing McCoy doing, you know,
• 1:53:19
  the physical comedy which. He's noise.
• 1:53:21
  Do the noise. You just see it, can't you?
• 1:53:28
  Which is a lovely visual and a thing that makes it, it just
• 1:53:31
  doesn't ever feel like it's gone into kind of phlegming parody
• 1:53:34
  because it's it's a little bit more eccentric than that.
• 1:53:40
  We both went to open our mouths. I mean, mine's going to be so
• 1:53:43
  succinct, Michael, I'll be able to hand over to you in less than
• 1:53:46
  a minute. All right, I'm just going to
• 1:53:48
  read out a little bit from the backpack, I think.
• 1:53:49
  I think I've sort of said my thoughts quite a lot of this.
• 1:53:54
  David A Mckinty lives in Scotland.
• 1:53:56
  He has contributed to numerous Doctor Who fan scenes.
• 1:53:59
  White Darkness is his first novel.
• 1:54:03
  No shit Sherlock, There you go. That's my summing up of White
• 1:54:06
  Darkness. Yeah, I I think first novel is
• 1:54:12
  one of the key phrases here. I think White Darkness is a is
• 1:54:15
  is a contradictory novel. It's a piece of work.
• 1:54:19
  It is. There are things about it that
• 1:54:21
  are fascinating. There are things about it that
• 1:54:25
  are very successful. There are things about it that
• 1:54:27
  are quite difficult by modern standards.
• 1:54:30
  And sometimes they're the same things.
• 1:54:33
  And I think it is all of it speaks to a certain immaturity
• 1:54:38
  in the writer in the range and probably in in the sort of
• 1:54:42
  corner of geek culture that this was emerging from at the time.
• 1:54:48
  But I think the good thing is you can also see in there the
• 1:54:52
  evidence that he would go on to be a really strong writer.
• 1:54:55
  I make it isn't that this was a Turkey and then somehow he wrote
• 1:54:58
  Sanctuary. You can from what I'm you know,
• 1:55:01
  from what I've heard of Sanctuary and from what I know
• 1:55:03
  of a lot of his other books, you can totally I can see how bullet
• 1:55:06
  time comes from this man when he has got more of a handle on that
• 1:55:10
  when he knows not to throw everything in, when he knows to
• 1:55:13
  keep it tighter that he would go on to have a lot of success.
• 1:55:18
  It's it's a very interesting book in many ways for good.
• 1:55:22
  And I'll and I do agree with James that it's one of the new
• 1:55:29
  adventures of that period that is more interested if he's often
• 1:55:34
  he's addressing the right questions about Doctor Who about
• 1:55:38
  what this range should do. The answers aren't always there,
• 1:55:42
  but it's I actually think the cover's all right.
• 1:55:49
  Compositionally, it's wonderful look at.
• 1:55:51
  That the stars, the stars falling until you get to the
• 1:55:55
  people and then there itself to go rapidly downhill.
• 1:56:00
  It's, it's odd in the almost no one's face.
• 1:56:04
  It's got four faces on it and you can't see any of them
• 1:56:08
  clearly, really. A mask as.
• 1:56:10
  Well. Bless her.
• 1:56:11
  The Doctor looks like one of those horror movies where
• 1:56:13
  someone has cut off someone else's face and is wearing it as
• 1:56:16
  their own. So look, if you're stuck for
• 1:56:19
  Halloween costume ideas, then. If you just blow that up to
• 1:56:25
  human face size, you've got yourself 4.
• 1:56:27
  Great costumes cut out the eyes. And put it over that would be
• 1:56:30
  imagine like literally standing in the corner of your bedroom
• 1:56:33
  and waking up your wife. You know, with that, well,
• 1:56:36
  terrifying. This Halloween, I will be going
• 1:56:39
  as Sylvester McCoy in the 1987 film Three Kinds of Heat and.
• 1:56:43
  Spending all evening saying no, it's not him in the New
• 1:56:46
  Adventures. What are you, Joe?
• 1:56:48
  Who are you? What are you dressing up as this
• 1:56:50
  year? I'm going to give a performance
• 1:56:52
  by Sophie Aldred. That will be frightening enough.
• 1:56:55
  OK, well my I was actually going.
• 1:56:56
  To I shall be. Yeah.
• 1:56:57
  What's her name? Mari from Shakedown.
• 1:56:59
  Return to the Sontarans. Don't.
• 1:57:02
  Shoot me now. Oh well, if you're going as
• 1:57:04
  Mari, I should go as Zorrell. Which is right?
• 1:57:08
  Vain. Wealthy.
• 1:57:09
  Fashion designer character. You would make a fine sassy.
• 1:57:13
  Bitch, you know in. Sequence.
• 1:57:15
  I will say though, Michael, what you said.
• 1:57:17
  There about the kernels of of what Mckinney's got to do with
• 1:57:24
  Doctor Who. It is all here, but I think it's
• 1:57:27
  sort of like a big mush up a big portmanteau of everything that
• 1:57:32
  he would do as individual books later and better.
• 1:57:37
  So he does the historical in sanctuary.
• 1:57:40
  He does like violent books in face of the enemy and bullet
• 1:57:44
  time a lot more successfully. I think he does history more
• 1:57:49
  interestingly in the 11th Tiger, you know.
• 1:57:51
  So I I do wonder if this is just that over excited.
• 1:57:55
  I'm going to throw it all in. They may never ask me back, you
• 1:57:59
  know. It's been a lovely discussion.
• 1:58:04
  Where can people find? You on the Internet?
• 1:58:06
  If they want more interesting gobbits.
• 1:58:08
  From you. Well, me.
• 1:58:10
  Here. Go is here.
• 1:58:13
  Michael. Whereabouts are you?
• 1:58:14
  He's here. Too, Yeah.
• 1:58:17
  I'm here too a lot of the time. You can also find me on blue.
• 1:58:21
  Sky. Just Michael Mills, because
• 1:58:25
  sometimes I also appear on other people's Doctor Who podcasts and
• 1:58:29
  you can find me on Blue Sky, where I often make comments for
• 1:58:33
  the episodes of Strictly Come Hamster.
• 1:58:35
  And even some of them occasionally get read out and
• 1:58:39
  not all of them. And my podcast, Neurotic
• 1:58:42
  Literature is currently going to third season and I think there's
• 1:58:48
  some fun to be had there as well.
• 1:58:50
  There's no over researched over long sentences and paragraphs
• 1:58:54
  there. It's all delicious.
• 1:58:56
  The writing over there, I thought you meant my
• 1:58:59
  contributions to this podcast for a minute, Joe, everyone of
• 1:59:02
  your sentences is over long, but you know.
• 1:59:04
  So, rich, we can't, we cannot ignore you.
• 1:59:07
  Fellas, now we have talked about skipping ahead right at almost
• 1:59:14
  the end of the new adventures, you know, and studying
• 1:59:17
  Lungbarrow. And I think it's time.
• 1:59:20
  I think it's time for us to broach this this very important
• 1:59:25
  culmination of the 7th Doctor's tenure.
• 1:59:29
  I'll tell you this for nothing straight away.
• 1:59:31
  It's far more satisfying than the last day that Big Finish put
• 1:59:34
  out. But that wouldn't be hard.
• 1:59:37
  What do you think? Yeah, I'm up for that.
• 1:59:41
  Yeah. Let's do it.
• 1:59:44
  Should. We end it there.
• 1:59:47
  Don't mind. Saying yes, Happy Halloween.
• 1:59:55
  There was a lot. Of cover there wasn't there.
• 1:59:57
  Yeah. That was an unusually.
• 2:00:01
  Rich conversation for a pop boy. Well, fortunately Long Barrow is
• 2:00:07
  a slim volume but not nothing though.
• 2:00:10
  Contributes nothing to the law. We're gonna have to put aside at
• 2:00:13
  least two hours just for the looming.
• 2:00:15
  All right. I, I think, I think, I think
• 2:00:19
  it's, I do think it's the reason we've got so much out of it is
• 2:00:23
  because. It's neither.
• 2:00:26
  It's there are things about it that are incredibly good and
• 2:00:28
  there are things about it that are deeply flawed.
• 2:00:29
  Like if it was a class, you know, the ones that are really
• 2:00:31
  good, you sort of run out of steam of going 0.
• 2:00:33
  This bit's really good. Oh, this bit's really good after
• 2:00:35
  a while. And the ones that are rubbish,
• 2:00:37
  There's only so many ways you can say this person doesn't know
• 2:00:40
  how to put sense. Like Sleep of Reason was only an
• 2:00:42
  hour because it's trash. Have you done the Pit yet?
• 2:00:48
  No, You know what we were going. To do, Michael decided to stop
• 2:00:52
  before. He needed a couple of months,
• 2:00:54
  you know, lots was going on, but it just.
• 2:00:56
  Coincided with when we were going to do the pit we were
• 2:00:59
  going to, we were going to do it and then we did the sleep.
• 2:01:04
  We were going to do it and. Then we did the sleep of reason
• 2:01:07
  and I genuinely found that. So.
• 2:01:09
  Difficult and such an aggravating read that I thought
• 2:01:12
  I can't I can't go straight onto the pit after this.
• 2:01:16
  It may kill me. I need a break.
• 2:01:18
  Yeah. Where you stopped us from doing.
• 2:01:21
  I think the next solo one we're. Doing Joe is the nightmare fair.
• 2:01:25
  And very, very happily, I have been stopped from doing my Joe
• 2:01:30
  asking what what are we going to do?
• 2:01:32
  Next, Michael and I. Get to go, I know I'll take you
• 2:01:35
  to for fuck's sake. Because a joke.
• 2:01:41
  That literally every podcast that has ever talked about the
• 2:01:44
  nightmare fare has made. Yeah, I'm really.
• 2:01:48
  Yeah, I find it very boring. That's really.
• 2:01:51
  Boring and you're like, how would.
• 2:01:52
  This have worked. It would have been like. 45
• 2:01:55
  minutes of Colin Baker playing a computer game.
• 2:01:58
  As directed by Matthew Robinson of Attack of the Cybermen fame
• 2:02:02
  Oh the. Dynamic direction that would
• 2:02:04
  doubtless have brought it to life.
• 2:02:07
  I do think the direction of. Attacking the sideman has got
• 2:02:09
  done. I mean, how dare you?
• 2:02:10
  He's good on. Location he is.
• 2:02:13
  He takes a sideman. Well, well, hang on a minute, as
• 2:02:20
  I'm getting all crosswise here now.
• 2:02:21
  Right. Nightmare fare.
• 2:02:23
  We're doing that next month, aren't we, Michael?
• 2:02:25
  Yeah, we're doing Charms of Midnight before long, Barrow.
• 2:02:29
  Oh, fuck, we are. Yeah.
• 2:02:30
  OK, hang on. Right.
• 2:02:32
  That's OK. Are we?
• 2:02:33
  Are we? Oh yes, I could insert now
• 2:02:36
  James, you know, quite. Adept.
• 2:02:38
  No one ever doubted your ability to win.
• 2:02:40
  We need to win. We need to do a Nightmare Before
• 2:02:43
  Christmas. Bit may I bring it up
• 2:02:45
  transitioning? Halloween.
• 2:02:47
  Hello Faithful. Listeners, I'm afraid the other
• 2:02:49
  two have lost themselves in what I can only describe as
• 2:02:52
  homosexual filth. But fear not, it is it is your
• 2:02:56
  steadfast heterosexual correspondent here to tell you
• 2:03:00
  that we've had such a joyous Halloween that we decided to do
• 2:03:02
  all again at Christmas. Joe, what are we going to do?
• 2:03:06
  Oh, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without hanging out
• 2:03:10
  with us straight and a gay. Man, and discussing plum
• 2:03:13
  pudding. James.
• 2:03:18
  No, I'm just trying Norcs. Better get the better get the
• 2:03:26
  pudding stirred up then. Am I?
• 2:03:29
  I mean, we'll be just, we'll be discussing Michael if you come.
• 2:03:34
  For me, when I say this, all right, Sapphire and Steel God.
• 2:03:40
  But also, you know, one of the very few Doctor Who stories, the
• 2:03:45
  linchpin of the plot is somebody committing suicide, a very rare
• 2:03:49
  thing at Christmas, and not just once but many times over.
• 2:03:53
  That's right, two fans. In watch something other than
• 2:03:57
  Blake's 7 Sapphire and steel. And goodnight sweetheart
• 2:04:01
  challenge. Michael, I've just realized
• 2:04:04
  something what and this is how I'm going to out this.
• 2:04:07
  Episode. Is the podcast still going at
• 2:04:09
  this stage? I mean, I'm not sure, you know,
• 2:04:11
  I'll put out anything. That's an episode.
• 2:04:16
  Do you realise we would have covered Anachrophobia, The Sleep
• 2:04:19
  of Reason and the Chimes of Midnight?
• 2:04:22
  That's officially every Doctor Who story where somebody self
• 2:04:25
  halves and I've never watched Sapphire in Steel.